SToP questioning: The link between great questions and sales success?
If you type ‘good sales questions’ into any internet search engine you will immediately be provided with any number of website opportunities all having available things like ‘100 sales questions to get to know your customer’, ‘50 best sales questions’, ‘20 open ended sales questions to get your customer talking’ etc… the list is endless. Importantly almost everything that you can read about sales questions on these websites, is good content.
So why, with so much good content available, do salespeople, account managers, anyone tasked with understanding their customer base often fail to get the quality information that can make a genuine difference in the relationship they are trying to nurture?
Introduction
Everyone who works in sales/customer relationship management has invested time in developing their knowledge of the use of open, probing and closed questions to build an understanding of their customer’s needs, wants, plans and expectations. Drawing probably from the opening few lines of the poem ‘The Elephant’s Child’ by Rudyard Kipling:
“I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew).
Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.”
Ever wonder why the time invested in the use of open, closed, probing questions etc. is falling just short of the detail you need to truly understand your customer? It’s because you have only solved 50% of the equation – the value of a good question is not just in its structure: “Ask the right person, the right question – get the right answer”.
SToP Questioning: Strategic, Tactical, Operational
The final phase of the poem ‘The Elephant’s Child’ reads:
I know a person small,
She keeps ten million serving-men, who get no rest at all!
She sends them abroad on her own affairs, from the second she opens her eyes.
One million How’s, two million Where’s, And seven million Whys!
Every parent will recognise their child in these lines because that is a child’s gift... natural curiosity. If we consider this, it is not the questioning that ever causes the issue. For most parents the frustration is borne out of our inability to provide the right answer! The same applies to sales… a multitude of great questions but if we are not asking the right person then the answer only frustrates or limits your ability to be of use to that customer. So, what is SToP questioning?
SToP questioning is the technique for making sure that all of your brilliant questions produce valuable replies. It relies on identifying the role that an individual has within a business and the scope of their role. Once you have this information your questions will increase significantly in value.
In every business there will be three levels of roles:
Strategic
Tactical
Operational
Each role serves, in its own defined way, to support and grow the business.
STRATEGIC roles
Write and agree business objectives, direction, growth plans etc.
Make sure all activity is aligned with business objective(s).
Heavily involved in business decision making.
Holistic view of business direction: live and breathe values & vision.
Have clarity about finances and the financial implications of making purchases, investing and spend.
TACTICAL roles
Know the day-to-day business habits and performance issues.
Conduit between senior team and on the ground staff.
Translate vision and values into working, living everyday requirements.
Identify and know their own customer’s objectives and success factors.
Understand how the business operates and what processes/functions are in place.
Know how strategic decisions can and will impact the business’s everyday activity.
OPERATIONAL roles
Understand how processes and functions are used.
Know all the niggly problems, issues, and barriers. And have created ‘workarounds’ to make things run smoothly.
Have an in-depth knowledge of current products and services that they provide.
Develop a keen eye for what is good for their customer base.
Will always have ideas/suggestions about how things could be better!
Which means that each role has a set of brilliant answers to give, providing the right question is asked.
How to use this effectively?
There are two ways to use this effectively:
Pro-active: prior to a customer meeting do your research
Establish the job title and role of the person you are meeting.
Research the scope of that role.
Build your question bank to ensure maximum opportunity to get valuable information form the meeting.
Re-active: question flexibility
Make sure your first 2-3 questions are: Tell me about your role? What does your role involve? Day to day what is your involvement in the running of the business?
Get that information and then have the knowledge and confidence to use only the questions from your extensive question bank to engage this customer.
Preference would always be ‘pro-active’ but it has to be accepted that this is not always possible. However using the 2-3 opening questions well will get you to the same starting point for SToP… even if it relies on the salesperson’s flexibility!
Identifying and working effectively using SToP
Here is a sample of great questions for each.
Strategic
How do you see your business developing over the coming years?
What clients do you work for? And who are you targeting?
What is the business looking for in a supplier/business partner?
How has business performance been in this business year?
Tactical
How do you support your customers on a day-to-day basis?
What are the current constraints you’re operating under? How could these be supported?
When would be the best time for the business to make any updates, changes? How could we help support this?
Where are the pinch points in the business?
Operational
What products do you mainly use?
What can I help you with today to make your role simpler?
What is the biggest challenge you face based on current business direction?
How would you change, upgrade things, to improve the business?
Insurance Support Solutions Ltd can provide specialist support to help you understand your customer base, to target your question base to get maximum value from every customer interaction, to respond & communicate whilst also using the outputs to continuously be improving your customer experience, your team, and your business.
Ask us about what is involved, and we will work with you to provide a bespoke solution that gives you the confidence and conviction to positively impact on the customer experience.
And Finally…
Sales manager asks: Did you get any orders from you customers today?
Salesman answers: Yes, I got two! ‘Stop calling!' and 'Stay away!'
