Hi my name is Flyn Penoyer. The purpose of this blog is to give you sales, communications, and management tips. I am amazed at how few salespeople do a good job qualifying before making their presentations. I think failure to qualify is one of the most frequent errors made in selling.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about the primary qualification question which is usually asked like so:
Are you the person that makes the decision to buy…
Or
Who is the person that makes the decision to…
Or
What is your authority in the decision to buy…
All of these are basically the same question. Here the seller is asking the prospect directly if they are the decision maker or who that person would be.
I have found a much better and more workable approach is to rephrase this question as follows:
How does your company go about making the decision to buy (your product or service)?
This version of the qualifying question is far less threatening and at the same time more flexible.
When the prospect starts to answer you now can question his or her responses to clarify exactly who does what in the buying process. It is also far harder for the prospect to miss lead you about their own authority.
Aug 12, 2009 at 09:54:21
This is a great suggestion. I do alot of research for companies on understanding the buying process their customers use, and without fail, they are astonished at the information I get from their own customers. Inevitably sales people ask me how I got them to open up–and it is by doing exactly what you suggest here. Put the question in the third party, de-personalize it and they are immediately more open to providing insight.
Aug 20, 2009 at 09:55:34
In over 30 years of selling and teaching sales people ow to be even more effective, I have found that the following question also works well in finding out who the decision make is without insulting the person you are speaking with: Who along with you will be making this decision?
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