Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from QUESTION YOUR WAY TO SALES SUCCESS © 2008 by Dave Kahle. Published by Career Press, Franklin Lakes, NJ. 800-227-3371. All rights reserved.
For a sales professional, there are two basic sets of questions with which a dedicated sales person should gain competence: Questions to ask prospects and customers; and questions to ask yourself.
Questions we ask ourselves are just as important, if not more so, than those we ask our prospects and customer. The reason goes back to the ultimate power of a question — it directs our thinking. Just as a good question directs the customer’s thinking, so, too, does a good question direct our own thinking. And thinking well is the ultimate success skill for a professional sales
person.
Some years ago I was interviewing a group of sales people for a consulting project in which I was engaged. One of the sales people, upon reflection, said, “I’ve come to realize that sales is really a thinking person’s game.”
I couldn’t agree more. Ultimately, the way you bring greater results into your organization, make an outstanding career for yourself, and provide more abundantly for your family is by outthinking your peers and your competitors. Thinking – good thinking done with discipline and methodology – is the ultimate competitive skill.
Yet, few sales people, and few people in general, regularly engage in good thinking. As the philosopher, Bertrand Russell said, “Most people would rather die than think. In fact, they do.”
This chapter is not designed to be the final word on how sales people could think more effectively (that’s the next book!). However, there are some easily applied rules, processes and practices that will enable you to think better and dramatically impact your performance.
Let’s start with a simple definition of good thinking for a sales person: Good thinking is asking yourself the right questions, in the right sequence, at the right times, and writing down the answers.
It sounds so simple, and it is. The power, like so much else in the world of the sales person, is in the excellent and disciplined execution. The rest of this chapter is going to discuss what it means to “ask yourself the right questions, in the right sequence, at the right times” but at this point I want to make the case for “writing down the answers.”