30: These are the best questions to ask decision makers

Do you want to ensure you're a compelling, valuable and trusted by the decision makers in your accounts? If so, Neil Rackham says to ask implication questions of decision makers in his book spin selling

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Welcome to the bite size sales podcast where we believe that sales is the most important team and a B2B company, that the sales team deserves great sales skills training but usually doesn't get it, and that taking bite-size steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve results. I am your host, Andrew Monahan , and I'm using my experiences in B2B sales to bring you simple, actionable ideas every day to help you get better.

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to episode 30 and today we're going back to the classic sales book spin selling by Neil Rakim to pick out a tip for you. And this is for anyone who's been in that situation where you're starting to work with your decision makers in the accounts that you've got. Maybe you've worked your way up there or you're tackling a new account or new territory and you're wondering how do I get in there and be relevant with these people? You know, you kind of feel like sometimes you don't have many shots, right? You want to make sure that if you put all that work in to get the meeting, get the call, that you really make it as impactful as possible. And I think we all intuitively know that we should be having different conversations with senior people, decision makers versus the conversations for those of them further down the chain in our accounts, what an SVP or a C level cares about is not the same as someone who is more of a doer or someone whose hands on the keyboard, who's actually in the field doing things in that company. But what is that conversation? What is the conversation you have with that senior person? Now this is what Neil Rackham addresses in spin selling and remember what spin means for those that this is new to suspenders . It's a , is a , is a questioning, a structure. So S stands for situational questions. P stands for problem questions. I stands for implication questions and Ann is the needs payoff . So the situation are factual. You're trying to get problems, you're trying to understand the impact of those problems and you're trying to understand what the payoff is if you fix those problems. So that's what spin is all about and what a and to read from the book. Um, he has a section that he calls where implication questions work best implication questions are particularly powerful in certain types of sale. Obviously as we've seen, the main power of implication questions is in larger sales where as necessary to increase the size of the problem in the customer's mind. But our research also found the implication questions are especially powerful in selling to decision makers. It's often possible to achieve a positive outcome from calls on users or influencers simply by asking problem questions. But with calls on decision makers is not as easy. Decision makers seem to respond more favorably to salespeople who uncover implications. Perhaps this is not surprising for our decision maker is a person whose success depends on seeing beyond the media problem to the underlying effects and consequences. You could say that decision maker deals and implications. There have been many occasions where we've been talking to decision makers after a call and heard them comment favorably on salespeople who asked them implication questions saying things like that person taught my language implications are the language of decision makers. And if you can talk their language, you'll influence them better. So that bears repeating implications are the language of decision makers. You know, if you're running a company or a department in a company, you're not sure a problems to work on, they're all around you. Everywhere you look, there's going to be things that can, are broken or need to be improved on or can be fixed and things like that. And you've probably got, people in your team are constantly bringing problems to you , uh , but not the actual solutions to those problems. And your job as someone senior is to understand them, figure them out the root causes, and then prioritize them. So you know what needs to be done to improve the business and your job is to make the best use of your resources in the company or in the department to deliver a big outcomes. And if the problems that we're talking about affect those outcomes, then they need to be fixed. So next time you go to a meeting with a decision maker, I challenge you to challenge yourself to ask about the implications of the problems. You know, maybe there's a quick thing to do with situational questions and problem questions. We then quickly get into implication questions to really taught their language. Um, if this doesn't get fixed, what might happen is one could question, right? So you imagine you've uncovered a problem, you talked a lot about it and said , okay, if this doesn't get fixed soon, what's the implication of that? Or what effect has it had already? What is , what's been the effect of this problem so far? How have your results been affected by this going on for the past two years? Ask those types of questions and then see how the conversation goes with someone who's a senior decision maker. [inaudible]

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The episode is sponsored by unstoppable dot du . Most sales teams are not trained effectively in the skills and mindset they deserve and these are the most important people in the company. It's no wonder that only about 50% of reps make quarter every year . Unstoppable is a service that helps sellers and leaders get great at the skills and mindset they need without taking time out of the field. It exists because if the sales team has the right skills and mindset, they thrive, they are confident and they perform much better. Find out more and even get a free sales book@bitesizesales.com no . To wrap up as Luke Richardson, GM of APEC at blue jeans network may or may not have one said training without implementation is just entertainment and prefer entertainment when Monaghan does it. So make sure you take action on what you learned and keep getting better every day. This world does not need more sales BS, so don't create anymore . Be great at the fundamentals. Be honest, be real. Be yourself. Just do not be us. And finally, I'm setting off as the great Joe Sexton would by saying on to sell

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