- Now asking questions is one
of the most powerful things you can do in sales. But here's the thing. A lot of salespeople out
there get into the habit of asking the wrong questions which ultimately kills their deals and cost them sales and money. So in this video, we're gonna show you the top five stupid questions that are probably costing
you sales and money. (light music) Hey everybody, what's going on. So in this video, I'm gonna shed light on the five top stupid questions that are probably costing
you sales and money. And by the end of this video you're not only gonna know which questions to completely avoid but I'm also gonna give you an alternative so that you can ask the right questions and close more deals. Now, before we go ahead and
get started with this video, make sure you give this video a like if you're excited to hear what these top five stupid questions are, and if you haven't already
make sure you subscribe because I'm gonna be
dropping new sales video two times per week. And if you wanna make
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number one sales challenge in the comments because I
do read every single comment and it helps give me new ideas
to make videos for you guys. Now moving into the top
five stupid questions. Now, the first stupid
question is gonna be, is now a good time to chat? Now, this typically happens
when you are cold calling and a lot of people
cold calling out there, you know, they ring the phone,
they talk to the prospect, and the first thing they say
is, is now a good time to chat? Now, the problem with
this is that if you say, is now a good time to chat? You open up the opportunity
for the prospect or the whoever you wanna
talk to, to say no, right? Because if you say is
now a good time to chat? Even though they picked up the phone, and they're just taking your call it doesn't mean they
actually wanna talk to you. So if you ask that question they may say no, then you're
fighting an uphill battle. And then you're never even
gonna build the rapport and trust to even get into
a selling conversation, and the call will end right there. So instead what you wanna do especially if you are cold calling is instead of saying, hey is now a good time to chat because that's exactly
what you don't wanna do. You wanna say something like this? "Hey John, I'm a little lost. Do you mind if I take a second
to tell you why I'm calling?" And John, whoever or
whoever you're talking to is gonna say, "Yeah sure, what's up?" And then you can start the
selling process from there. But if you give the
prospect an opportunity to say no so quickly especially at the beginning of the call, then you might actually just kill the deal and the sales meeting right there. But if you kind of just play like, hey, I'm a little lost, like, "Hey John, I'm a little lost. Do you mind if I take a second to tell you why I'm calling?" Then that person's
gonna be a lot more open to taking your call. So that's gonna be one of
the top stupid questions when it comes to cold calling. And if you wanna see more on cold calling, I have a video on exactly how to do that, link's gonna be somewhere on the screen or down in the description. Now, moving on to stupid
question number two, and that is gonna be are
you the decision maker? Now, during any time of the sales process, you wanna know who the decision maker is because if you don't know
who the decision maker is then you can't actually
close the deal, right? But the thing is, you wanna ask it in a way that is very subtle and it doesn't really put the prospect in the position where they
are more likely to lie to you. For example if you ask someone directly, are you the decision maker? Most people are just gonna say yes even if they're not the
decision maker, right? Because a low level person
always wants to pretend like they're in power. So they'll say, yeah,
make all the decisions. When in fact they have to get approvals from other people,
teams, maybe their bosses or whatever the case is. Even if the person is
actually the decision maker they may actually not say
they're the decision maker because it's a negotiating tactic so that they can use that sometime in the future to lower the price or to get more favorable terms. So instead of asking someone directly, hey, are you the decision maker? And you know, that's kind of off putting, and it's too direct, and people don't wanna really answer you, instead what you can say is, "Hey, is there anyone
else we need to involve before making a decision?" And you can kind of see
here I'm using a lot of we and I'm just asking hey, is there anyone else
we need to involve, right? It could be your boss. It could be someone on
a whole different team that has to approve it. You know, whatever the case
is, you're not directly saying hey, are you the person that
is gonna make the decision? Because that's not, it's too direct. And it's too, people feel
like they're being attacked. So instead you wanna come off
of a more collaborative voice and say, "Hey listen, is there anyone else we need to involve before making a decision?" And the person is a lot more
likely to answer you truthfully and show you exactly how the
decision making process works at the company they work at,
or the company that they own. All right, so we're gonna move
into question number three. And that is what do you dislike
about your current vendor? Now, here's the thing when
you're having a sales meeting a lot of times you know, the prospect or the
person you wanna sell into is already using maybe your competitor or an alternative. And you're trying to get them
to see a different perspective and maybe use your product or service instead of
somebody else, right? Now, here's the thing. Even if someone is using
a competitor already they don't wanna necessarily talk bad about the products that they
are already using, right? Because I actually can bite
them back in the future. So if you asked somebody, "Hey, you know, what do you dislike about your current vendor?" They're not gonna tell you because why should they tell you, right? Because they're, maybe
they're somewhat happy. Maybe not everything's perfect, but why should they
tell a complete stranger or sales person about
their problems, right? And you wanna think of it, like not just in sales, but
in everyday regular life people don't necessarily
like to dump their problems on other people. They want to share their problems with people that they can trust in hopes that the other person might
be able to give them insight and help them. So when in sales is the exact same thing. Instead of asking someone hey, you know, what do you hate about your vendor the most? People don't tell you the answer to that because it's too personal, you haven't built enough trust, and it's too direct of a question. So instead what we can do is we can ask a different variation of
that question and ask, hey, you know, listen
for your current vendor, if you were to give them a one out of 10, one being not good at all,
10 being they're perfect, what would that be? You know, where would they land? Right, something like that. And usually the prospect
will either give you a number like seven or eight or nine, and all you have to do no
matter what number they give you is let's say they give you a seven right? They say, hey, our current vendor is good, they're a seven, but they're not perfect." All you gotta do as a salesperson is ask, okay, seven's not bad,
but I'm just curious what's actually missing
from what they're doing that would get them to a 10? And so if you're asking them this way you're not saying exactly
what they're doing bad. You're just saying, you know
what are the opportunities that they can actually be better in? So if a prospect is
already using a competitor and there are some gaps
or room for improvements, then you wanna see what those gaps are and see if you can
actually fill in those gaps and that will actually lead
you to starting a conversation on whether or not you can
actually replace your vendor or maybe act as a compliment to the vendor and, you know stack
your product or service on top of theirs, and maybe that's how you
might be able to get the sale. Now, if you just wanna like
talk bad about a current vendor and say, oh, they suck. Or, oh, you know, they're
not good, here's why? People aren't gonna trust you because you're just bad mouthing somebody without real reason. Because if they chose that vendor, obviously they chose it for a reason. So if you bad mouth them you're not only trying to
make that vendor look bad, but you're also trying to say that the prospect made a bad decision and nobody likes to be wrong. So instead you just wanna say, hey, what are the things that we can actually do
better here, you know? So basically you just
wanna position your product or service as a way to fill in the gaps. And then that's how you're
gonna be able to sell into companies that already
have a competitor in place, or act as an alternative
to a product or service. All right, so now we are gonna move into question number four and that is, do you need
time to think it over, right? This is one of the most cop-out phrases that you can use in
sales when you're nervous or you don't know what to say. And here's the thing. A lot of times prospects or whoever you're trying to
talk to, they will tell you that they need more time
to think about it, right? So the thing is a lot of times, most prospects already do this, right? So you do not wanna prompt them into this phase because
time kills most deals. So the more time that
passes the more likely someone is to not buy your
product or service, right? You want them to understand
exactly what they need to know before making a decision, and try to make, get them
to make a decision quickly because you know, delaying a deal doesn't do anyone any good, it doesn't do you any good, it doesn't do them any good, right? If you can actually genuinely help them why not make the decision sooner? I'm not saying that you
have to force a customer to buy right there on the spot. Especially like closing on one phone call, especially if it's a big decision, most people don't do that. However, you just wanna make sure that you don't get the prospect
to delay a deal too long. And one of the worst
ways to do that is to say do you need time to think it over? So a alternative question
you can ask to get a timeline on when someone is more
likely to make a decision and try to shorten that timeline is to ask a simple question, like, is there a timeline you have on when you would like to make a decision? So instead of just asking, hey, do you need time to think it over? I'm asking for a specific timeline. They might say three days, they might say one week, they
might say one month, right? So if it's in a range that
is a reasonable for you, they might say, hey, I can make the decision
by the end of the week. And you wanna roll with that, then you can go ahead and roll with that. And everything's good. Now, if they say something like, hey, I need two
months to think about it. What you wanna do is you wanna
shorten that timeline, right? Because you wanna ask questions like okay, two months, I totally understand where you're coming from, but what exactly needs to
happen in those two months before you actually make a decision? Because I wanna make sure
you have all the information you need now so you don't
have to delay anything, right? So basically if someone tries
to give you a long timeline you wanna figure out why exactly they're
giving you that timeline and you know, give them information that will actually shorten that timeline because why would you wanna waste time so much time making a decision when you can make it a lot more quickly? So not only it helps the
salesperson and your business because you're generating
revenue more quickly but it also helps the prospect because they don't have to waste time thinking about what they should do. And instead you're giving
them all the information they need to actually make
the decision a lot sooner. Now we're gonna move
into the next question, which is question number five. And that is, can I send you an email with more information? Now typically when this happens during a sales meeting it's
usually when the prospect is not really interested and the sales person doesn't
really know what to say or how to handle the objection. So they'll just say, hey, you know I'll just
send you information or more information over email,
and you can make a decision. Now here's the thing, most people, when you send them that email are never going to make a decision and never gonna persuade
them with more information like, especially with
case studies, or PDF, or you know, something like that, because if they're not
able to see whether or not they're interested on
the phone call with you of a sales person, which is your job, then you know, a PDF or
something that is not gonna get the job done either. So instead of just saying like hey, you know, I'll send
you more information instead what you wanna do is if somebody asks you, like,
just send me more information. You wanna say something like, okay, I can send you
some more information, but you know what kind
of information exactly are you looking for
before you actually know whether or not you can
make a decision, right? And by understanding
what kind of information someone is looking for, instead of actually sending
that information via email, what you can do is talk
about it over the phone because you know, in a sales process it's not just like your
trying to sell them, you're trying to qualify whether or not they're gonna be a good fit for your product or service. So instead of wasting time and delaying deals and
sending emails back and forth, you know, over a long period of time, which may result in no sale at all, instead you wanna say like so, hey, listen, I wanna be real with you and I don't wanna waste your time. I don't wanna waste my time either. So I'm curious to know what
information do you need before you actually make a decision? Because I think these are things that we can actually talk over the phone so we don't have to waste
time emailing each other back and forth. Is that okay with you? They're gonna say, okay, sure. And then they'll tell you exactly what information they need to know. And you're gonna figure out right there on that call, whether or not
they are a qualified prospect someone who is qualified to
purchase your product or service or if they're not totally fine just move on to the next person. But if they are then you can, then you can continue the sales process without having to delay anything by sending emails back and forth. So with that said those are gonna be the five most common stupid sales questions that may be costing you sales and money. Make sure you avoid these
questions at all costs. And if you already have the habit of asking these hard questions,
go ahead and replace them with the alternatives that I
already gave you in this video. And if you made it to
the end of this video make sure you give this video a like because every like does help
this video reach new audiences. And if you haven't already
make sure you subscribe because I'm gonna be
releasing two new videos every single week, and in the comments let me know what your number
one sales challenge is because I'm gonna be making
videos based on the comments and feedback that I get. And I wanna make sure I
wanna make quality content just for you. With that said, that's it for this video. And I'm gonna see you
guys in the next one.
