Here’s how you know if you’re making assumptions:
You go in, you talk to somebody and then you give a presentation.
And then you find out after all said and done, they got a silent partner that they need to run it by. You made an assumption you were in front of the person making the decision.
Why did you make an assumption? Because you didn’t ask “who else besides you has anything to do with this, or any say-so in this, or who even cares about what we’re talking about?”
Why didn’t you ask the question? Because you didn’t know that you need to ask the question. You’ve never been taught to ask the question.
Or maybe you’re afraid to ask the question because you might find an answer you didn’t want to hear.
Or you knew to ask the question but it occurred to you thirty minutes later when you’re in your car driving to another appointment–the wrong timing!
So why do salespeople don’t ask good questions?
- Because they don’t know which questions to ask.
- They don’t have the courage to ask the questions.
- They don’t know who to ask the questions to.
- They don’t know and what order to ask the questions.
- They don’t know when to ask the questions so they just blindly go through and just ramble on about what they do.
If you’re finding out stuff on the back end that you should have known on the front end, then that’s a pretty good indication that you’re guilty of doing those things.