Sales Wide Open Learn the art of asking open-ended questions.

Traditional sales models focus on the salesperson's abilityto interrogate the potential client with open-ended questions. Thetheory is, if you're able to find out what someone reallyneeds, you can fill that need with your product and service.What's scary is that most salespeople still don't botherwith this step--they pitch whatever they're selling to whomeverwill listen.

One of the earliest books that outlined this approach was NeilRackham's SPIN Selling. SPIN selling suggests you askopen-ended questions that determine the potential customers'SITUATION, the PROBLEM they have, the IMPLICATION of that problemand, finally, what product/service they NEED to fix thesituation.

When the customer is qualified, the salesperson presents all thelogical reasons why their solution would fix the problem andfulfill the need. If done correctly, the salesperson feeds exactlywhat the customer asked for right back to him.