Sales questions : Qualifying a prospect’s seriousness

I think it’s fair to say that our jobs as sales professionals are as much about deciding who not to sell to as who to sell to. Qualifying-out the tyre kickers is a great time saver. These questions will help you do that. Crucial in this is attempting to identify whether there is a genuine pain driving their enquiry (if there is not, the opportunity is likely to drop out towards the end of the sales cycle when risk and spending money come into serous consideration)
• Why do this now? Why not next month, or next year?
• What happens if you DON’T (solve this issue)?
• If you can’t find a solution to this, what do think will happen / what will that mean for you/ the department/ company?
• Why does this need to be done?
• Why is this important? Why does it matter? Can’t you just stick with what you’ve got?
• If you get this up and running, how does that change things? What does it do for you?
• What are the key reasons that you are doing this for?
• Have you ever tried to do something similar to this in the past? What stopped you that time?
• From what we have discussed, what are the most important issues to you?
More questions for you to use in your selling coming soon. Bookmark/RSS SalesItch now…. And don’t forget to add a comment to share your favourite questions with the community!