6 Magic Questions Trusted Advisors Ask = More Sales

When sales reps ask the right questions, they will close more sales.

Are you training your team to ask questions, and listen to the answers?

What are the best questions to ask?

The best questions, according to sales expert Keenan, author of Gap Selling, are the ones that get the customer to “think about their current state,” whether they are happy with where they are, and how things might improve with a different approach, process, or tools.

When we do business analysis with clients, these are exactly the kinds of questions we encourage them to ask about their business, because true and lasting transformations don’t happen chugging along in the status quo. The experience they have of thinking through their answers with us is part of why they see us as trusted advisors.

• Am I where I need to be?
• Am I where I want to be?
• What is getting in my way?
• Could an improvement in approach, process, or tools get me there?
• How could this process be done more efficiently?
• How might I be sabotaging my own progress toward my goals?

Can you envision the rich conversations that might ensue if your sales reps were trained to ask prospects insightful questions like these, listen carefully to the answers, then ask follow-up questions based on what the customer told them?

Listening with intentionality is at the core of productive customer relationships. You’re getting to know prospects and customers and demonstrating that you care about their real needs, even the ones they might not have taken the time – yet -- to name themselves.

Everything that is learned must, of course, get recorded in your CRM so that all communications, all touches, across your organization, remain focused on what is important to the progress of that customer’s business goals.

When customers start thinking, they often see holes in the workflow, bottlenecks, and places where processes have not been adapted to changes in the market or customer behavior. Because Creatio combines CRM with business process management, and because it is low-code and therefore easily adaptable in-house without IT specialists, once those places become visible, the customer is often delighted to see how easily they can improve the processes in question.

One more thing: Keenan brings it home to the leaders, saying it all starts with them. Are they doing it themselves? Are they taking seriously their responsibility to train their teams to think?

Transform your sales by getting customers to think about where they stand now as well as where they want to go. Help them open their eyes to how they can get from Point A to Point B, and they’ll know you are on their side.

Reach out to us, and let’s think together about how to get you where you want to go.

Transform your business performance by supporting all your processes and relationships with Creatio’s unified, no-code CRM.

P.S. We recommend Keenan as an excellent source of sales wisdom. Check out his short video on getting customers to think, which spurred our thinking to share with you here.

GAP Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know about Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price.