2 Responses

1. Influencing Skills
   Hi Dave

   A useful type of question we train sales people to use when influencing is called a benefit question. A benefit question is designed to get the other person talking about your solution in a positve way.

   So instead of the sales person trying to influence the other person by saying something along the lines of “by using our service we can cut 20% off your current production time so you’ll save time etc” we train the sales person to ask “what would you gain from a 20% reduction in production times?”. In this example the client is encouraged to tell the sales person what they’ll benefit, not the sales person telling the client. This is much more effective at influencing then the first example.

   Other examples of benefit questions are:

   “Who would gain most from a quicker turnaround time?”

   “How would it help you to sort this problem out?”

   “What advantage could you get from fewer breakdowns?”

   I have a more detailed explanation with more examples in a word document I can email you if you like. Contact details on website.

   Damian Burcher
   Vision Sales Services
   http://www.visionsales.co.uk

2. Influencing skills
   I agree with Damian that using focused questions is a very good way to help people.
   Over a number of years we have assembled a series of ‘best practice’ questions for a number fo core issues such as Influencing and I can send this to you if this would be helpful.

   richard.ilsley@altemis.net
   http://www.altemis.net