Don’t Believe Your Own Marketing (Too Much) Sophisticated product marketing teams provide personas and typical pain points as a starting point for sales conversations. They also love to arm sales teams with case studies. On call recordings, I hear salespeople telling customers about the typical pain points and referencing the case studies. As counter-culture as this may sound, the customer’s reaction is typically, “That’s not … Read more
Why asking “I am curious” is disingenuous I’ve talked before about the need for salespeople to be curious, so it may come as a surprise when I tell you not to say you’re curious. To be curious is a mind set. To say, “By the way, I’m curious,” is another thing entirely that can feel disingenuous because the question is hiding a deeper motivation, and … Read more
The Purpose of Questions When you’re on a sales call, you should have a purpose. That purpose helps to focus your questions and guide the call, to ultimately bring about a solution. If you went to engineering school, like I did, you were taught that asking the right questions will bring you 80% of the way to a solution. You cannot jump to a solution, … Read more
Sales: A Scientific Method Most people would argue that sales is an art, not a science. I don’t disagree, but I do believe you can apply the scientific method to the sales process. For those of you who’ve been out of school for a while, here’s a refresher on the steps: Ask a question Do background research Construct a hypothesis Test with an experiment Analyze … Read more
The Surprising Power of Questions “Top-performing salespeople ask questions differently…” This is a quote from The Surprising Power of Questions by Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie John, Harvard Business Review May-June 2018. The quote is based on analysis of call recordings by Gong, a tech company that provides a sales call recording and analysis tool. The article is packed with research by various groups on … Read more