“Under what circumstances will you buy what I am offering?”Excuse me? You want me to ask someone this question? Yes I do, yes I do. Not only that, I realize that you may not want to, and the first few times you do it, your skin will crawl. I had the same experience, but I can sure you, when this question becomes part of your pre-proposal repertoire, you will spend a lot less time spinning your wheels post proposal, and a lot more time developing business relationships with profitable customers.Once you have exhausted your discovery tactics and you feel you understand everything you need to know about your prospect, their company, their requirements, and the players it is time to confirm. Run through the list as you understand it and make sure that they agree to every point. Then the question comes in, and I suggest asking a variation every time. Here is the first:“So if I can meet all of these requirements what will happen next?”Once you get an understanding of that, the next question should resonate:“If we can meet all of these requests, when will you be ready to buy?”Then:“Is there anything else you need to make a purchase?”“Are there any points we have not discussed?”And finally:“If we meet all of this, then what will happen?”If you do not end up with “No” for the ‘anything else’ questions, and “we will buy” from the ‘what will happen’ questions, then somewhere you have yet to uncover all of the purchasing conditions. Review what you have and look for more. It is also quite possible you are not connected with the real decision maker, in which case you have spent too much time in discovery and need to start again somewhere else. Chances are that this is not the case if you were gaining commitment along the way.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 10:21 am and is filed under Commitment, Discovery, Sales Training. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.