Do you already know that open questions are an important tool for finding out what your prospect is looking for, and his or her motivations? It’s a point to master in order to become a great sales interviewer.

Two words work significantly better than the ones you usually find listed in sales-training books. Typically what you will see are all the w words that is, what, which, where, who and why. But only two of those are really good and one of them is dangerous if you aren’t careful.

What is excellent. Here are some typical questions you can use it to begin:

What do you want to do with (this item, equipment etc.)?

What are your priorities?

What matters to you most?

What time-scale do you have?

What do you like about . . .?

Which and Where got a free ride along with the more powerful words, those two are usable but not outstanding.

Why has to be used with discretion. Anything more than two or three why s in an interview comes across as rather aggressive, that is the last thing that a sales-interview should be. (Leave that to Jeremy Paxman and other political journalists).

A powerful use of why is a one-off shot in response to a customer saying, I dont like . . . (some feature or another model etc.). Just ask, ‘Why?’

Who has a natural application for discovering the decision maker(s) involved in buying within the prospects company. You can ask, Who else would be involved in the decision?

Ive left the other great one to last; How, a word that works very well together with What.

An example:

What do you want to do with this equipment?

Customer replies and you continue;

How did you handle this issue before?

What happened?

How did you deal with that?

What do you see as the main problem?

How are you planning to tackle it in the future?

And so on.

What and How give you an almost instant sales interview and find out the buyers motivations in an effective, un-pressured way. They have a happy relationship with one another.

I suggest you get acquainted.

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Information on the Selling for Engineers manual and Seminar

Robert Seviour is a sales trainer specialising in business development for technical companies.