Sales Training: Consumer Selling

The more information a salesperson has about his prospect, the more likely the prospect will purchase from the salesperson.

The use of open-ended questions has been proven to foster a high quality dialogue with the prospect about their needs and desires. Open-ended questions are typically questions that start with the words who, what, where, when, why, and how. Copious use of open-ended questions by salespeople is considered a selling best practice and helps to create above average sales performance.

But the consumer sales profession is in the midst of an open-ended question crisis. What is this crisis? The infrequent utilization of open-ended questioning by salespeople. The result is that many salespeople possess only a cursory understanding of their prospects' purchasing motivations. This can have a devastating effect on both sales performance and customer satisfaction.

A recent study completed by Selling to Consumers shows evidence of this crisis. We studied a group of retail jewelry salespeople by sending a shopper into each store in the group. Stores in the study included both national chains and independent stores. The shopper was sent to the stores to shop for a surprise gift for his wife.

During the salesperson/prospect interactions that were part of the study, the sales representatives asked an average of only 5.5 open-ended questions. The sales interactions lasted an average of just over 18 minutes.

If we ignore the salespeople's opening questions (such as "What can I help you with today?") and rapport-building questions (such as "Where do you work?") and trite questions (such as "How are you?"), we are left with the questions that directly focus on the prospect's needs and desires. When we subtracted the opening questions, rapport-building questions, and trite questions from the question count, the number of open-ended questions asked by the salespeople in our study dropped to 2.25 per sales interaction. With so few open-ended questions being asked of the shopper, the quality of the sales interactions suffered.

Although there was a range of sales expertise exhibited in the sales interactions in our study, it appeared that the priority of the salespeople we visited was to show the shopper as many items as possible in hopes the prospect would see something he liked. In our experience, this approach yields poor sales results and low average sale metrics for the sales person. In these types of sales interactions, only a superficial and limited analysis of prospect needs and desires can occur.

If salespeople would dramatically increase the number of open-ended questions they ask during a sales interaction, they would enter into more fruitful conversations with their prospects. This would lead to the salesperson developing a better understanding of each prospect's needs and desires and, therefore, make it easier to select appropriate products to show each prospect. Each prospect brings her own biases and her own macro-and micro-needs to the salesperson/prospect relationship. Salespeople will fare better if they work hard at unearthing the details of the prospect's buying motivations. And, customer satisfaction increases if the customer concludes that the salesperson has spent sufficient effort getting information from her.

In our study, there were far more closed questions (questions that can be answered with yes or no, or multiple choice questions) asked of our shopper than open-ended questions. But since closed questions are most beneficial in a sales interaction when they are used to clarify information or to ask the customer to purchase, closed questions such as "Isn't that special?" or "Did I confuse you enough now?" or "Does that make sense?" have almost no value toward identifying needs and desires.

Following is a list of possible open-ended questions that salespeople in our study could have asked our shopper. Any of these questions would have helped to increase the focus of the sales dialogue on the prospect's needs and desires.

· What kind of jewelry does she love?

· What do you want her to think when she gets this gift?

· How do you want her to feel when she opens the gift?

· How do you want her to react when she opens the gift?

· How long have you been thinking about buying a gift like this?

· Why did you decide to do this now, instead of six months ago or a year ago?

· Where else have you shopped?

· Where else do you intend to shop if you don't find something you like here?

· What have you found that you think she would like?

· What have you found that you think she wouldn't like?

· How much are you thinking of spending on this gift?

· What is your wife's birth month?

· When would you like to give this gift to her?

· It sounds like your wife is a very special person. Please tell me a about her!

· What clothing colors does she wear?

· What kind of jewelry does she own?

· Tell me about her favorite piece of jewelry.

· Why does she like it so much?

· Who will be present when you give her the gift?

· How would you like to go about presenting the gift to her?

· What is your wife's name?

· How long have you been married?

· Where did you get married?

· How will you go about making a decision on which item to purchase?

· What kind of jewelry gifts have you given her in the past?

Customer needs must be identified in the selling process. But did you know that prospect needs can be categorized into three different levels?

The Prospect Needs Assessment Tool is a worksheet to help salespeople analyze specific needs on all three levels so that a complete understanding of prospect needs occurs.