Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes.

Sellers have to ask a LOT of questions. Eventually, every buyer breaks under the pressure.

So, vary your style to push the extent of the breaking point.

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Today we'll cover:

• Story Time
• Adversarial Relationship
• Struggle
• Soften
• Statements

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My wife and I met in the UK despite our families being practically neighbors while growing up. This means we only met each other's extended family and friends when we returned to Sydney 3 years later.

During one of these social events, I sat next to Lauren, a family friend of my wife's parents.

Lauren peppered me with questions over the next hour or maybe only 5 minutes. It was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life.

While Lauren was polite, she kept asking short, sharp, and direct questions, such as:

Truthfully, I don't remember the exact questions; I only remember how it made me feel and the intensity of her piercing eyes.

While polite, it felt like Lauren was conducting an interrogation.

This is how many founders start their first interaction with a buyer. The founder knows their initial sales job is to qualify the buyer and discover potential deals.

However, sellers overinvest in the answer and underinvest in the buyer's feelings - leading to an uncomfortable and untrusting buyer#.

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Adversarial Relationship

When you think of being repeatedly asked questions, you're probably picturing something along the lines of:

• A police interrogation
• A courtroom scene from a legal drama
• A parent attempting to teach their child a lesson
• A school teacher or professor berating a student's lack of homework

In these examples, there is an adversarial relationship where the asker and answerer have wildly different motives, and the answerer doesn't benefit from giving the asker what they seek.

On the other hand, a great buyer's journey results in mutual benefit for buyer and seller; you're both peers aiming for the right outcome on the journey.

Elite sellers utilize various questioning techniques to avoid triggering an adversarial relationship to get the right outcome for all involved.

This involves the 3 S's:

• Struggle
• Soften
• Statements

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Struggle

Struggling as a seller is simple but not easy.

By making it appear that you are struggling with what to ask, what to say, or unsure of where to take a conversation, you trigger the buyer's innate desire to help those less fortunate than them.

Struggling turns elite sellers from an authoritarian, demanding answers to a poor soul who just needs help. And everyone's ego gets a kick out of helping someone struggling.

Some examples:

Try struggling with something in your next sales call and see the power of allowing your buyer to step in and help you.

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Softening your questions

Another tried and true method is to add a softener to your questions. That way, the seller provides empathy and makes it easier for the buyer's ego to share information they might otherwise have wished to keep to themselves.

Sometimes, the best softener can be to give the buyer a verbal "out" by adding something to the end of the question that implies the seller has doubts about the question being asked.

Some examples:

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Commanding Statements

Lastly, elite sellers may not ask a question. They may instead make a commanding statement for the buyer to provide some information.

Commanding statements allow sellers to ask a question without triggering the buyer's interrogation feeling and allow for a hyper-specific request for information that is hard to do with a traditional question.

Some examples:

While no questioning technique is a panacea, when you vary your style, you'll create the right environment for the buyer's journey to be, and feel, mutually beneficial.

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Do you have a favourite question you ask buyers? One that keeps them at ease, but uncovers the right information?

Until next week,
Scott Cowley

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