American Management Association publishes, Questions That Sell, by Paul Cherry

PHILADELPHIA, PA | May 15, 2006 | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
by Michael Boyette

Paul Cherry questions the questions that most salespeople ask. His new book, Questions That Sell, helps salespeople dig deeper. Salespeople ask lots of questions. But, says author and consultant Paul Cherry, they often fail to ask the right kinds of questions. Cherry is the author of Questions That Sell, just published by AMACOM Books, and CEO of Performance Based Results, an international sales and leadership training organization that reaches more than 5,000 sales professionals a year. The book retails for $16.95 and is available in bookstores and online at www.amazon.com and www.amacombooks.com.

It’s no accident that so many sales questions miss the mark, Cherry says, because many salespeople are trained to ask the wrong kinds of questions. “Most sales training focuses on data-gathering questions: How long have you been with your current vendor? What are your goals? Are you the decision maker? Those questions do nothing for customers. Customers already know the answers,” he says.

In Questions that Sell, Cherry urges salespeople to use questions that get at the buyer’s underlying emotions as well as facts. “Research shows that emotion, not logic, is the primary driver of sales. Buyers use logic to justify a decision that they arrive at emotionally,” he says.

The best questions are ones that get at these emotions, the book says. They’re also the ones that salespeople tend to avoid. “Emotions are risky territory,” says Cherry. “You don’t know where they will lead – but that’s the strength of this approach. Emotion-based questions help you discover new ways to meet buyers’ needs.”

Indeed, emotional responses do more than tell the salesperson what’s motivating the buyer. They help buyers understand their own decision-making process. “Salespeople often say that customers don’t know what they want. Good questions can help buyers discover something they didn’t know.”

Such questions can also create a significant competitive edge, Cherry says. “Ordinary sales questions lead to ordinary sales proposals. Sellers who dig deeper will come up with extraordinary ways to serve their customers,” he says.

The book takes a pragmatic approach, offering a variety of real-life scenarios and sample questions based on this questioning approach. Cherry draws on his extensive experience as a sales trainer to address some of the most common sales issues that people bring up in his seminars, including:

• I have trouble getting in the door.”
• “Prospects are in a rush for information but then don’t take any action.”
• “Customers say they value service, but expect the lowest price.”
• “I’m wasting time on opportunities that go nowhere.”
• “I’m pushed off to non-decision makers.”
• “They’re always telling me they don’t have the money to buy right now.”

Questions that take you further
In addition to offering guidance for these types of day-to-day sales situations, Cherry describes three types of questions that allow salespeople to delve deeper:

Lock-on questions. Customers are reluctant to express their true concerns and problems because they don’t want to seem vulnerable. But they often drop hints into their conversation. Lock-on questions focus on those signals to bring problems to the surface. For example, a customer says, “We’ve been trying to get this project off the ground for several months.” A lock-on question might be: “I noticed you said the word trying. What’s worked so far and what hasn’t?”

Impact questions. Customers often underestimate the true costs of a problem. Impact questions get customers to fully consider what’s at stake in the purchase decision. For example: “How much business do you think you lose each time this problem occurs? How much staff time goes toward fixing the problem? How does it affect morale when people are asked to stay late unexpectedly? How much does your downtime cost? How does your management feel about the problem?”

Vision questions. These are questions that help customers and prospects see what’s possible and the results that can be achieved. They turn the salesperson’s role around. Instead of telling customers all of the benefits they’ll enjoy from doing business with you, vision questions allow customers to articulate these benefits on their own, making them much more powerful. Vision questions usually contain the word “if.” For example: “If we could implement that change, how do you think that would affect your goals within the company?”