Open or Closed – whats goin on?

17 Jul 2008

I took a look at a You Tube video published by The Intelligent Sales Club and presented by their founder Grant Leboff, called “The Open and Closed Question Model is Flawed.”

Now, I really like this guy and the way that he puts things across, really accessible and he makes a lot of sense, and this short ‘tip’ video was just what I expected. The premise here, in brief, is that sales people have been trained to ask Open or Closed questions, with a view to elicit Yes/No type answers (Closed) or more informative answers (Open), with a view to them being able to ‘control and have’ good

conversations.

So it got me thinking… (no rude comments please). If this is true, and I believe that Grant is bang on, then what is the best way to maximise on your conversations with Prospects and Customers, and I think (again Grant) spells this out on the video. Give your buyer motivation to talk, engage with them, discuss and frame questions seeking relevant information, giving them a reason to WANT to tell you more than just a Yes or No.

Unmotivated buyers will still give you little or no information, regardless of how clever you think your questioning is, and I guess, what’s more important, they will not feel the desire to want to do business with you. If you are interested and engage with your Prospects intelligently, then they will ‘like’ you more, and most probably feel more comfortable, to want to do business with you, as well as giving you more detailed answers.

If you want to take a look at what the Intelligent Sales Club is up to, why not visit http://www.intelligentsalesclub.com and click on the TV link at the top.

Sales Pitch : If we spend time thinking about what we do in our day to day lives, we would quickly realise how badly we need a system to track the multitude of things we have to do. That would free up enough time to have that 30 minutes ON your business, rather than in it. So I guess, OpenCRM to rule the world.