This episode is sponsored by: Skipio - Get one month free on an Individual plan with code TSE, or, 2 free seats/licenses on Teams. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. NetHunt - NetHunt CRM offers TSE listeners a 40% discount for the first 3 months along with free user training and a dedicated Customer Success Manager with any pricing plan. We’ve talked about the importance of the discovery meeting in the previous episode. This time, Jeff Bounds talks about the powerful questions to ask during your discovery meeting. The discovery meeting conversation The drama Glengarry Glen Ross and all the other movies impressed on many the importance of closing. People are buying closing books and closing materials because that’s how we have been preconditioned. People see the close because it's part of the exchange. It’s the part that you see below the tip of the iceberg. Without discovery meetings, salespeople are just seeing the clip and not the story. Jeff talked to hundreds, if not thousands, of salespeople and he saw that the biggest ingredient that many don’t appreciate is the use of appropriate questions. Many salespeople also don’t think much of what’s in it for the buyers. These things prevent many from going to the next level. At the end of the day, it’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s not about what matters to you but on what matters to the buyers. Most salespeople often assume: we assume that we understand the product, we assume that we know what the buyers want, and more. The assumption is one of the worst things that you can do because 9 out of 10 times, you can be wrong. Without probing and without asking the right questions, you won’t be able to find out what your prospects are trying to accomplish. Salespeople continue to use the canned sales pitch even when it doesn’t often work. At the end of the day, it comes across as inauthentic and people can see through that. People process visual images at 10 million bits per second. In that sense, salespeople are artists and we all need to paint a good picture for our clients. Ask the right questions Salespeople need to ask the right questions and often, these are difficult probing questions to ask. The hard questions allow you to anchor on the objections before they even happen. Try to get into the emotions of the prospects because people buy on emotion and then they justify it with logic. Roleplay is one of the best things you can do to prepare yourself and other salespeople in your team as well. Jeff shares this quote, ‘Prepare more and practice, then you’ll bleed less in war.’ It means preparing yourself well and leveraging your power of prediction in any aspect of the sales process. No matter what you’re doing, before you pick up the phone and make that call, you need to understand the space, the pain points, and what’s going on in the marketplace. When you’re calling with the clients, you’ll be able to provide valuable information, ask the right questions, and bring up ideas to get the conversation going. What you need in the discovery process You need clarity and you need to understand from the prospects’ side, especially their gain and the things they want to accomplish. Try this little exercise: Get a piece of paper and write down three things. These are the reasons why people aren’t buying from you. These are the things that prevent you from getting the deal. Fear Uncertainty Doubts Discovery: Powerful Questions to Ask During Your Discovery Meeting” episode resources Follow Jeff...

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