What’s the hidden reason service professionals aren't asking enough questions during sales conversations?

There's a reason service professionals don't ask enough questions during their sales conversations, but most stumble over it. (And it's what’s leading prospects to not hire them, give them a "maybe" or ghost them when they try to follow up.)

Here's why this happens:

When we are in a sales conversation, we feel like we are under a spotlight. We’re trying to say all the right things, hit high-benefits statements, and make sure we have the person’s interest and attention about our subject. We have to get it right, and so we go into "sales mode."

It’s also because the truly effective sales mode is rarely taught. Lastly, it’s because most sales professionals and business owners don’t realize that they need help in this area. It’s like trying to see the forest through the trees, and we end up information-dumping, trying to convince and getting tied up in our minds and with our mouths, and our prospects feel unseen and unheard.

Conventional wisdom about sales says that you need to accentuate the benefits rather than the features of what you’re presenting. I even learned that in Boy Scouts as a youngster during Salesmanship Merit Badge. Being an Eagle Scout, I can tell you there’s a lot that the Scouts get right, but boy, did they get this one wrong.

Conventional wisdom also says that you are presenting. After all, it is called a "sales presentation." But if that’s what you think of it, how you prepare and how you engage a prospect, it’s usually not going to end with them saying yes, or at least not as often as it should with them saying yes.

So what’s the solution?

Sales is a process. It’s a collaboration, a give-and-take exchange, a meeting of the minds.

If you aren’t asking enough of the right questions, or even asking many questions at all, how can you arrive at a meeting of the minds? You can’t, because you don’t know what’s in their mind. You’re relying on what’s in your mind, your knowledge about what their problem is and what your solution is, but you’re missing that critical ingredient, which is how THEY see their situation, their needs, their wants, and your solution.

If you’re just presenting, you don’t get any of that. And that is what they need – that internal awareness – in order to feel confident that your solution is the right one for them.

When you’re asking powerful questions, you’re helping your prospect to connect the dots.

What they want, what’s in the way, what the internal and external obstacles are, what they see the solution is, how they view your solution, what their motivations are, how they’re going to get past any internal or subconscious fear about moving forward with you, and so on.

When we ask questions that bring these points to light and raise their awareness of what’s really going on for them, that’s when the collaboration takes hold. That’s when they see that you care and you have the expertise to help them.

This always makes me think back to when my wife and I were planning our wedding. We were interviewing vendors to choose the food, the music, the photography and the videography.

When we met with a DJ who came highly recommended, he sat down with us at our coffee table, laid out cool brochures and colorful pictures of weddings he had done, and launched into a 20-minute sales presentation. He gushed about all the benefits and the features of what he was selling.

He talked about how incredible the laser lights are that he uses to make it feel like a VIP event or a concert, how he loved to feel the pulse of the crowd as their energy wains late in the evening after a long day so he knew exactly what to pull out – music, props, lights (he was extremely proud of his light system!) to wake up the crowd and continue the party late into the night.

He went on and on about all of this, and I loved his enthusiasm and his confidence.

But he didn’t ask us a single question, let alone the right questions.

Had he done that, he would have found out early on that we were having a daytime wedding in a brightly lit, sunshine-filled ballroom and that we had lots of creative ideas ourselves of how we wanted the dance part of the reception to run.

And maybe he was a fantastic DJ for daytime weddings and working with couples to shape the perfect party for their big day. But since he wasn’t asking any questions, we couldn’t assume that he would work with us to make the day exactly how we wanted, but rather how he wanted.

Maybe he fell prey to the very same things that I mentioned earlier: feeling the pressure to make the sale, feeling like he had to put his best foot forward, and show his best moves, benefits and features, talk about his success stories and happy couples, and all those things that go through our minds when we reflexively and involuntarily stop asking question and try hard to win a sale, rather than consciously putting our ego, fears and those natural sales reflexes aside so we can really understand the other person and come up with the best solution that will make them extremely happy.

After listening to him for almost half an hour, where he didn’t take a break or pause to let us speak up, my energy was gone to start the conversation over again from the beginning. In my mind, it was just a, "Thank you for your time, we’ll get back to you and let you know."

But as I’m sure you’ve experienced, we never got back to him, because it was a hard "no" right from the beginning. We wanted vendors who wanted to get to know us, our personalities, our visions for the wedding and the day, our expectations, our hopes, our fears.

Just like your clients want the same thing from a provider – an expert partner who knows them and cares about them.

It was this conversation, along with years of training sales professionals in corporate America and then going into business for myself and studying the top sales gurus, putting together a structure, and doing lots of trial and error until I got it right, that led me to develop, use and then teach my clients the AWARE Sales Conversation System.

Because I knew I needed a way to get clients from those people who I saw that needed my help but weren’t buying, as well as how to successfully steer an interaction into a sales opportunity when I was having great networking and even informal conversations with friends and family without sounding salesly or damaging the relationship by bringing up my services.

Knowing and asking the right questions from a proven structure does that and helps you attract and land perfect clients so you can work with and support the people you love while making a huge impact, building a thriving business and making a great living.

We are starting up a new small group training of the AWARE Sales Conversation System on October 6 that runs four weeks. The calls are recorded on zoom, so you have access in case you miss a session or want to go back and review some of the finer points.

You get detailed instructions, worksheets, templates and coaching from me to learn and customize the system to your business and your clients. We also coach you on how you handle objections coming from a place of service and grace while empowering the client to make the best decision so you feel great about it, they are more likely to say yes because they see that you care and are not pushing them just to make a sale, and they don’t ghost you, either.

You get to feel so good about how you’re offering your service that you don’t have any weirdness, fear or uneasiness about it, which clients can sense and appreciate, and leads to more sales and referrals.

The 4-week program is priced at just $2000, which is a steal (and will go up when I run it again), so most service providers recoup their investment with getting one or two new clients and start seeing an amazing ROI within weeks.

DM me and mention the AWARE Sales Conversation System to get all the info, answer your questions and have a short conversation to see if this is a fit for you.