242: I Like It, It Sounds Really Good, But I Am Not Going To Buy It

<p>You manage to get the appointment, which at the moment is seriously job well done.  Trying to get hold of clients, when everyone is working from home is currently a character building exercise.  You ask permission to ask questions.  Well done!  You are now in the top 1% pf salespeople in Japan.  You do ask your questions and quickly realise you have just what they need.  Bingo! We are going to do a deal here today, so you are getting pumped.  But you don’t do a deal, in fact you leave with nothing but your deflated ego and damaged confidence.  The finish line was right there in front of you and you fell down short.  Why?</p> <p> </p> <p>This is one of the most frustrating things in sales.  You do all of the right things or so you think and then you don’t get the deal.  You start analysing what went wrong.  Let me save you some time on that one.  You didn’t ask your questions in the right way.  Finding out things like: what they want, where they are now and where they want to be, are all brilliant questions.  They won’t do the deal though, because you have missed one vital step.</p> <p> </p> <p>That step is to ask the question about where they want to be, and ask it in a specific way.  We can say, “so you have mentioned to me the current state of play in the business, can you now please allow me to understand where you want the business to be going forward?”.  Good try, but no cigar.  That question needs an addendum.  We need to ask it this way, “so you have mentioned to me the current state of play in the business, can you now please allow me to understand where you want the business to be going forward and what are the implications, if you don’t get there fast enough?”.</p> <p> </p> <p>This is a clever phrasing of the question, because it is no longer about whether they can get there or not, but can they get there fast enough.  Often, the buyer is sitting there listening to us, but thinking to themselves, “that is all very true and we will work on all of that – BY OURSELVES”.  That may be the case, but the wo