A three-year survey of 600 buyers found two questions that kill sales calls: "Tell me more about your business" and "Are you the decision maker?" They signal you didn't prepare. Instead, ask "How can I be of the most help to you and your company today?"
Hey, what's going on, friends and fans? Today we're talking about critical questions that maybe you should or shouldn't ask on your next sales call. All right, well, we had the opportunity to survey 600 buyers over the last 3 years, and there's one question that universally came up as a question that people didn't like to answer and didn't even like to be asked. Are you curious to know what it is? Tell me more about your business. What? It's like a very common question a lot of us ask when we meet somebody, tell me more about your business. Now, if you're at a networking event or a trade show and you've never met this person before, I think it's a very good question to ask. It's gonna drill in deeper, build a relationship with that person as you try to inquire more about them. But when you have a set sales call where you're gonna be on Zoom or Teams or live in person, there's a certain level of expectation of almost any buyer, no matter their age, that you are gonna come prepared to that meeting. That means researching, finding out who the leadership teams are, finding out the timeline of the company, finding out current things the company is doing, where the company is located, how many locations they have, all those different kind of things. Now, can you come to the meeting so prepared that you come across as being arrogant and a bit of a know-it-all? The answer is yes, yes you can, so you wanna temper that back. But if you're asking the question, tell me more about your business, to actually learn about the business, then you need to be asking yourself, could I prepare for this call just a little bit better? All right, first question, tell me more about your business. Second question, universally hated, are you the decision maker? Most of the time, people are not going to grant you a meeting if they don't have some way to be involved in the decision-making process. Very rarely do people grant you meetings out of curiosity. Actually, I don't know why they— I did air quotes there. Out of curiosity. Normally people grant you a meeting because they've already done the research, they know who you are, and they're looking for some final details. So just remember those questions, friends, that maybe you might want to reframe those questions. You might want to come up with different questions, because if you're asking the same questions that everybody else is asking, then you're not different than anybody else. You're just a salesperson. Instead, what I want you to consider is What are the questions you could potentially ask that will elevate the conversation and take it to new places? One of my favorites is, when you granted me this meeting, and thank you so much for that, when you granted me this meeting, I'm sure you were hoping there was something that we could do for you. How can I be of the most help to you and your company today? Something you might want to consider. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody would be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. It's a great career, friends. It's a great career. you'll feed your family for a lifetime. Get out there and sell something, make us all proud, would ya? Yes, sir.
