Friday, June 8, 2007

Is your technique working?

I've been working on improving my sales skills, and one thing I've been reading a lot about is “Question Based Selling.” It says, engage your prospect in conversation, earn their trust, and learn about their issues before proposing anything. Makes sense.

So I was at a trade show yesterday, wandering the floor and wandered into a booth and asked the man there to tell me what his company did. He gave me something very vague then asked me a series of questions about my company and past experiences.

I answered quite a few of them before I realized that he either did not understand me or was not listening to me because the follow-on questions did not make sense. I finally asked him again if he could tell me what his company did. He replied again that the did many things, and at this point asked me if it made sense for us to meet and continue talking.

By this time, I was a little annoyed that he would not answer my questions and my first reaction was “no it does not make sense for us to meet.” It was not until later that I realized that he was probably new and probably asking the questions that he had memorized, but the key was, that his technique was not working. I think that’s an important observation whether you’re selling, managing people, or developing software. Know what’s working and what’s not. In order to do this you need to pay attention to the results you’re getting. Even the best technique does not always work and we all need to be flexible. Have plenty of tools in your toolbox, and use them wisely.

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