by Paul Cherry
You may be wondering why our salesperson continued to ask vision questions after it was clear that a sale was in the works. It is not enough to go through your business life making single, shortsighted sales. A better strategy is to form relationships, to position yourself as a partner, and to see the sale through to the end and beyond.
The bonding that occurred between Samantha and Diane over Greenville’s future and Diane’s place in it will translate into loyalty and trust down the road. Besides that, these questions allowed Samantha to get to the root of her customer’s desires. It is only through a real understanding of a customer and her situation that everyone’s needs are met. This not only allows for a tailored response at the outset but also ensures that the relationship will endure beyond the signing of the contract.
CHAPTER
9
Try It Yourself:
A Sales Scenario to Sharpen Your Questioning Skills
THIS BOOK HAS introduced you to numerous tools you can use to increase the quality of your business interactions and build real relationships with your customers. Now you will practice using those tools together. As you go through the exercises in this chapter, notice that there are no hard-and-fast rules regulating the order of questions. For example, you might find that opening with an educational question will work in some instances but not others. The key to using these questions lies in listening to the customers and then responding to their concerns, ideas, and frustrations.
Instead of using an example of one of the salespeople introduced in previous chapters, this chapter focuses on you. You will be the salesperson navigating the business situation, creating questions appropriate for the customer. I have chosen a scenario that is simple and generic, so you can focus on formulating good questions without having to acquire a lot of product knowledge. Similar situations could be encountered in virtually any business-to-business situation.
The purpose of this book has been to help you in your business- to-business selling. This scenario is a way for you to apply all of the questioning strategies you’ve learned in a complex environment—one that includes multiple calls, several business personalities, and complex analysis. Your goals should be to:
1. Obtain a genuine understanding of the company’s decisionmaking process.
2. Learn the criteria used by key players in the company.
3. Understand the motivating forces behind the customer’s decisions.
The Scenario
Your company, General Financial, specializes in commercial leasing. Your division focuses on leasing cars and trucks. Companies might, for example, lease a fleet of vans for their service crews, or lease cars for a field sales organization.
General started only ten years ago and already competes with numerous third-party commercial leasing firms, as well as with leading financial institutions. One of your key challenges is that the leasing industry is commodity driven. To customers, all leases seem pretty much the same. All third-party leasing companies can lease virtually any make or model. So typically, the buying decision comes down to whoever can provide the best terms at the best price.
Your company tries to distinguish itself from the competition by offering value-added solutions and superior service. Your company has a good reputation, and you’ve developed many personal relationships in the industry, not only with prospects and customers but also with other players, such as auto dealers and body shops. As the sales agent in charge of commercial leasing, you have access to thousands of cars and trucks at a moment’s notice—but so do your competitors.
Recently, you’ve done business with a real estate company that needs cars for approximately fifty real estate agents. You’ve also done a special deal with a cosmetics company that needed a fleet of purple luxury sedans. You not only recommended the type of sedan, but arranged for custom paint jobs.
Today you receive a memo from your boss concerning a company that needs trucks for hundreds of technicians throughout the United States. The company, Metro Scales, sells and services commercial scales. The leasing company it used in the past recently went out of business and they’ve invited you to bid on a new contract.
Here’s the information your boss provides to you:
Metro Scales is looking for a new leasing agent. It runs a fleet of three thousand trucks. The vice president of the company, Lou Tyler, drives a hard bargain. He has basically run the company for the last twenty-two years because the president would rather spend his days in Saint Tropez.
The sales technicians are the heart of the company. They are the ones who install the scales and fix them when they break down. The technicians cannot get anywhere without their trucks. They rely on them to transport not only scales but also their test weights (which are used to calibrate the scales) and their tools.
You need to find a contact in the company to get your foot in the door. Otherwise, General Financial will be lost among the big-name banks. You have to be careful not to step on anyone’s toes, because there has been talk of a merger between Metro Scales and another major scale company, which has made Metro’s employees nervous.
Exercise 1
Prepare a list of questions for Vanessa O’Reilly, who is in charge of transportation for Metro Scales. She is the one who must deal with the technicians’ complaints about breakdowns or other problems with reliability. If the trucks do not run smoothly, Vanessa is not happy.
You have a phone meeting scheduled with Vanessa, during which you hope to engage her and uncover some valuable information about her company’s needs. Vanessa has agreed to speak with you, but she’s told your boss that her company will probably go with a major bank. Vanessa will probably be your only path into Metro Scales. But if you can get Vanessa on your side, you will have gone a long way toward completing this sale.
In the spaces below, compile some possible questions to ask Vanessa in the upcoming meeting. (In the parentheses, you are reminded to include several different types of questions and address various business influences.)
1. (An expansion question that addresses internal customers)
2. (A question that uncovers performance pressures, such as pressure to reduce overhead or increase profits, or bottlenecks causing constraints on the customer’s time)
3. (A comparison question that addresses satisfaction with the previous vendor)
4. (A vision question that addresses goals for the company as well as Vanessa’s career goals)
After talking with Vanessa, you have discovered the following things:
1.Vanessa was extremely unhappy with the previous vendor and was glad to see them go. The technicians constantly came to her with truck problems, complaining about having to take their vehicles in to be serviced and then missing out on overtime because they did not have access to replacement vehicles. She also complained that the previous vendor was slow to get her new vehicles, sometimes taking up to six months to provide a truck to a new technician.
2.Upper management has put pressure on Vanessa consistently over the last two years because of low productivity in her department. Vanessa tried again and again to explain that the problem was with the trucks and not her people. After two years, she was vindicated when the current vendor filed for bankruptcy.
3.The company was losing a good amount of money each year because of truck breakdowns and how long trucks were out of service while waiting for repairs. Vanessa tells you that, on average, three trucks break down each day (out of three thousand trucks nationwide). This translates to fifteen trucks per week and fifteen technicians complaining to Vanessa. She estimates that she has to spend twelve hours per week simply keeping the trucks up and running, and one person in Vanessa’s office dedicates all her time to rescheduling appointments because of truck breakdowns.
4.Vanessa feels that Lou Tyler (the company’s vice president) has always respected her, but the chief of operations, Tim Daly, has often refused to acknowledge how important transportation is to Metro Scales’s survival. Rather than focusing on the need
for reliable transportation, Daly puts all of his attention into increasing productivity and reaching sales and service quotas.
5.The merger talk around Metro Scales has reached a fever pitch and Vanessa fears her job might be downsized if the merger takes place.
Exercise 2
Using the information you have learned from Vanessa, construct impact questions that will highlight the problems of the current vendor.
1. Impact question #1 (Hint: impact on customers)
2. Impact question #2 (Hint: impact on the company)
3. Impact question #3 (Hint: impact on Vanessa and her ability to get her work done)
Owing to your insightful questions and engagement of Vanessa O’Reilly, you have been able to secure a “sit-down” with her and Tim Daly. The meeting will take place a week from today, so you need to gather information about the current state of affairs in the scale industry. You also need to formulate questions to ask Tim Daly so that you will be able to move the sale forward.
From your research you have found that the scale industry has been growing steadily over the last several years, and Metro Scales has been doing relatively well.
Sales of new scales generally depend on the state of the economy. If businesses are expanding, they buy more scales; if businesses are suffering, they don’t need new scales. Metro Scales also generates a good deal of revenue from its contracts—companies with a large number of scales often purchase a service contract that entitles them to around-the-clock service and a set rate for repairs.
As Vanessa O’Reilly told you, the scale business cannot function without trucks. Trucks get the technicians, their tools, and the scales to the customers. Customers, especially those with service contracts, want their scales fixed now! Excuses about trucks being repaired or not enough trucks for each technician ring hollow to customers who are losing money every minute their scales are out of commission.
After your initial meeting with Vanessa and your stellar use of the impact questions, Vanessa called you with more precise information. She told you that a full 5 percent of customer calls currently require rescheduling because of truck problems. Each technician has approximately 120 customers, and on average each customer is worth $20,000 per year to Metro Scales. (Hint: This is great information to help you quantify the problem.)
Now that you have all of this information at your disposal, you need to formulate some possible questions for Tim Daly, chief of operations. Daly’s main responsibilities include supervision of the ten regional managers and keeping an eye on the bottom line. Vanessa has told you that Daly responds to numbers, especially those with dollar signs in front of them.
Exercise 3
Prepare your questions for Tim Daly, chief of operations. Remember to use the information you learned from Vanessa, as well as from your own research:
1. An expansion question dealing with the bottom line (Hint: Consider what Vanessa told you about Tim’s priorities, such as employee productivity, sales quotas, and the amount of time technicians spend with each of their customers.)
2. A comparison question addressing expectations of a vendor (Hint: Invite them to compare their current experience with an ideal one.)
3. A qualifying or comparison question concerning the decisionmaking process (Hint: Try to uncover the different sets of buying criteria among the decisionmakers.)
4. An expansion or comparison question related to external customers (Hint: This is a great opportunity to create a sense of urgency by shining the light on the qualities customers want from Metro Scales but are not currently getting. The information you gather will lead you to the next question when you quantify the problem and its impact on the company.)
5. A question that quantifies the problem (Hint: Focus on how the problem is negatively affecting Metro Scales.)
6. A vision question (Hint: Invite the buyer to dream about a better situation.)
As you prepare for your meeting with Tim Daly, you call him to ask if there are any particular areas of concern that he would like you to address during your presentation. He tells you, “I need to see an increase in profit by 10 percent over the next quarter and I do not want to have to worry about transportation—this should not have to be my major concern.”
Exercise 4
Use Tim Daly’s statement to construct lock-on questions. You should be able to write at least four lock-on questions from this one statement. I have given you an example to help jog your memory.
Example: Tim, you mentioned that you want to see an increase in profit by 10 percent. How do others in the company share your vision regarding short- and long-term goals?
After meeting with Vanessa and Tim, you are buoyed by the impact you appear to have made on this tough-to-please businessman. Here is what you have found out:
1.The company has been losing a lot of money without realizing it. Tim estimated that the company has 360,000 customers across the nation. You related Vanessa’s information that 5 percent of calls had to be rescheduled and you calculated that this translates to 18,000 unhappy customers per year. Tim commented that probably 10 percent of those 18,000 customers (which is 1,800 customers) leave every year and go to Metro Scales’s competition because of scheduling delays; together you computed a total loss of $36 million per year (when an average customer is worth $20,000 per year). This was eye-opening for Tim.
2.Although Tim did not really appreciate the magnitude of the problems Vanessa and the technicians were encountering with the current vendor, he did recognize that the company’s productivity was suffering because of these problems. When he learned that fifteen technicians each week were sitting around waiting for their trucks to be repaired, he was furious. He estimated this issue alone cut into productivity and cost Metro Scales $2 million a year. You notice that Vanessa has a small smile on her face—you’ve gotten Tim to acknowledge something she’s been trying to tell him for a long time.
3.In the meeting, Vanessa commented that the current vendor’s trucks were getting only sixteen miles per gallon. Metro Scales is currently spending $9 million each year on gas for its technicians.
4.Tim was slow to open up to you, but eventually he revealed that Metro Scales was falling short of its sales and service quotas by nearly 15 percent. He also told you that Lou Tyler, the company’s vice president, had recently questioned him about this problem.
Now you are getting the golden opportunity: the chance to meet with Lou Tyler and show him what General Financial can do for Metro Scales. During your meeting with Lou, you will need to do a couple of things:
Summarize all of the numbers and calculations you have learned from talking with Vanessa and Tim. Remember to lay out all of the ways Metro Scales has been losing money by dealing with the current vendor. Highlight the ways that General Financial could reduce or eliminate these losses and therefore increase Metro Scales’s profits.
Take Lou through another series of impact questions, this time dealing with the issue of spending on gas for the trucks. Inform Lou that General Financial has access to new trucks with a gas mileage of twenty-four miles per gallon, which alone could save him on average $3 million each year.
Disclose the fact that your company’s leasing services will cost Metro Scales 25 percent more each year than it was paying its current vendor, but be sure to remind Lou of the savings he will derive from your company and that the net gain will be millions of dollars.
Exercise 5
This is the ultimate test of your skills. You will be talking to the vice president of the company—the person empowered to sign off on the final decision. Ensure that your questions not only illustrate how much money the company is losing right now because of its current leasing contract but also how much money the company stands to gain by doing business with General Financial.
1. Provide a series of impact questions dealing with gas mileage and how it is affecting Metro Scales’s bottom line.
2. Develop a question about Metro Scales’s competitors, highlighting the 1,800
customers lost each year due to cancellations.
3. Draw up a series of vision questions concerning Lou’s personal and business goals.
4. Plan a question about the talk of a merger—what that could mean to Lou, and how General Financial could help Metro Scales’s financial situation going into the merger.
5. Propose a qualifying question (see Chapter 10) concerning Lou’s readiness to complete this deal.
By now you have probably come to the realization that this type of selling does not eliminate all complications. There are still problems that could arise and personal matters that might interfere with the sale. But you’re no longer selling on price in a race to the bottom. You have all of these tools at your disposal, and you should be able to anticipate objections, alleviate fears, and motivate your customers to make a decision. Whether you use an educational question, an impact question, or a qualifying question, you’ll find that, after practicing these techniques, you will certainly have an edge over your competition.
CHAPTER
10
Qualifying Questions:
Get Prospects to Tell You Why You Should Do Business with Them
AS A SALESPERSON, you need to be especially vigorous about how you spend your workday. If you devote several hours to writing up a proposal for a prospective customer only to be given the brush-off, no one is going to compensate you for this lost time. Your valuable hours should not be wasted on those who have no interest in pursuing a substantive business relationship. To prevent these time-loss situations from occurring (or at least from occurring too much), you need to qualify each of your sales opportunities.
