The Value of Asking Questions

As a salesperson, you (hopefully) enjoy interacting with your prospects. However, a typical sales mistake is forcing the prospect to fit our communication style rather than the other way around. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the author of The Savage Leader and founder of Group Sixty, Darren Reinke, to discuss building rapport the way the prospect wants. 

Sellers assume prospects like to communicate in the same style as the seller.

• Selling should start with the understanding that we’re all different. Establishing that early on will impact your ability to build rapport.
• Some people might like starting with a conversation; others prefer to focus on the tasks at hand. We’re all different.
• Get a sense of the customer’s style by learning what motivates and drives them.
• Listen to the prospect and pay attention to their tone and how they conduct themselves to understand how to communicate.

Three steps to learn a prospect’s communication style:

• Intention: Have a willingness to change and do something different. Question if there are better ways to build rapport as a seller and think about the potential achievements.
• Reflection: Know what kind of seller you are and use that understanding to change your communication (when necessary.)
• Action: Analyze someone’s body language, tone of speaking, and how they interact and put that change into play.

A focus on the commission can ruin the relationship. 

• If you see someone as a dollar sign, you probably won’t build rapport anytime soon.
• Ask prompts to directly understand the audience - How do you like to receive information? How do you want to communicate?
• Asking questions (and listening to the answers) will indicate how you can best communicate. Be more intentional with your questions.
• People will come back to the conversation repeatedly because they like talking to you. Less talking and more listening is the best way to build relationships.

Darren’s biggest takeaway? Don’t sell the way you like to sell; sell the way the prospect wants to be sold. Tailor your style to engage your audience. Find Darren on LinkedIn, visit his website thesavageleader.com, and find his book on Amazon.

This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

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This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

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This episode is brought to you in part by Closers.io.

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This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad.

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As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com