The key to success in sales is ... Asking Great Questions!

There is an urban myth that great salespeople are good talkers but in reality, the opposite is true. Great salespeople are in fact wonderful listeners.

They ask excellent, incisive questions that uncover the information that helps them to solve problems and win business. The key skill needed here is called Fact Finding and Qualification (FFQ).

Understanding where you are in any sales cycle is critical to your success. It’s an ongoing process to ensure you are spending your sales-time wisely; with someone who is interested in what you sell, and has the ability to make a decision to buy. This is why FFQ is so important. 

At the heart of FFQ is the ability to ask the right questions and the best way to do this is in a conversation. And remember, a conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. This is where many salespeople fail, because they try to talk a prospective client into buying. 

Grilling someone to demand information on budget, timescale and decision making process on an initial call is a very bad idea. One of the keys to success is to establish rapport and build trust. And you only really do that by sharing information and delivering on your promises.

The questions you ask will depend on what you are selling, but as a minimum you must understand the following;

• The problem they are trying to solve (this is what drives a decision to buy) 
• What is driving the urgency (this is the motivation to take action)
• How they make a decision (the process, people and criteria they use to decide)
• When they will make a decision (this is related to urgency)
• What you need to do to win (unless you now this you have no plan ... and that's very bad!)

When you think about it, FFQ is something you should do all the time. It makes sense really because the more you know about the people you do business with, the better you can serve them. And that's ultimately what drives strong and sustainable sales growth in any business.

14th Century lesson for today's complex world

Occam's Razor is a principle for understanding the world that was developed over 600 years ago by an English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham.

He wrote "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" 

... and if your Latin is as patchy as mine, this translates as "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." 



The term razor describes the act of shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get to the simplest explanation. Occam's Razor is often used to illustrate simplicity in many areas such as Science and Philosophy, but it also applies to business for example;

"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."

We are bombarded with information from so many different sources today that it's hard to focus. The ability to develop messages that are clear, concise and compelling is more important today than ever before. William of Ockham was clearly onto something!