The Sales Archaeologist

When you think about asking great questions maybe like me you think of great interviews. I enjoy watching people like David Frost , Larry King and James Lipton skillfully ask questions of whomever they have in the chair and get great information, humorous stories and the truth out of their guests.

These guests are often tough, private, egomaniacs or eccentrics - sound familiar?

Sales people could learn much by watching these experts use great questions to do that – ultimately when a sales person is meeting with a new prospect the task is similar. Unfortunately most of the time the way they go about completing the task is entirely different and as a result they often fail to get to the truth and gather the information they need.

What are the common the threads we notice when we watch some of these professionals conducting an interview?

• Notice who does most of the talking – the guest
• They are relaxed
• They don’t seem to have a script
• They often let the conversation appear to go where the guest wants it to
• They ask both tough questions and soft questions
• They have thoroughly researched their guest before so they don’t need to waste time on the basics
• When the interview is done it is because they ran out of time not because they ran out of content
• They use a variety of questioning styles that help to keep the conversation rich and interesting

Now think about your last sales call – did you apply these rules and if not, what might have been different if you had? Do your sales calls sound like one of these interviews? It might be difficult to master but all sales people should be attempting to get to this level. One thing you can do is to look at your questioning style and develop new ways to ask questions – if you watched this interview of George Michael regarding his law suit with Sony in the late 90's by David Frost you will hear numerous segues into tough questions that prepared the guest and the audience, kept our interest and caused George Michael to open up far more than a basic “canned” question.

One example of that: David wanted to know why George had allowed the poor contract to exist for so long, why fight it now. He could have said “why now?” but instead he asked this –

“looking back now, with hindsight, surely there were times when you wanted to just walk into Sony and say this is over, why didn’t you?”

Do you see the difference? The longer question prompted George to answer the question differently, it required an answer involving retrospect, and lessons learned, experience, mistakes and a broader context. It forced him to explain not just why now but also why not back then. It gave him the benefit of the doubt in the present (hindsight = I assume you learned your lesson) but then by putting him back in the situation at a time when he did nothing it gave us the real answer as to why.

Take some time to watch the great interviewers and note some of the questions they ask and how they ask them. Then incorporate a few of these styles into your meetings and watch what happens. If you struggle with these type of skills why not try our -Sales Achievement Grader