Thoughtful probing questions are the keys sales professionals use to throw open the gates to customers’ most compelling wants, needs and expectations. Sales experts are unanimous in praising open-ended questions that oblige customers to clear the lines of communication. But there’s more to effective questioning than eliminating yes or no answers. To find out which questioning tactics lead to closed sales Selling Power spoke with Marc Moreau, a sales manager with Myron Manufacturing in Maywood, NJ, and John Zwiercan, a Philadelphia-based sales rep with XPDEX, the nation’s second-largest paper packaging products distributor.

After he has qualified a potential customer, Zwiercan says he uses a simple open-ended question to elicit as much information as possible about the client’s business.”I basically ask a customer, ‘What do you do?'” he says. “I’m glad to let them do the talking. With a little prompting most customers will talk for ten minutes or more about their business. Then, as I find out what their business is and what their needs are, that information drives what type of follow-up questions I need to ask. If they tell me that suppliers often can’t provide next-day service, well that’s a problem that I can fix, so I ask questions about that issue.”

Moreau, whose company specializes in imprinted personalized business gifts, says that the way a salesperson phrases questions can effectively build credibility and do plenty to minimize the sales cycle.

“A lot of times, in a probing question I will refer to an industry publication, or if I’m lucky enough to run across a Wall Street Journal article that refers to the company, I will mention that in my opening,” he says. “That way I can use questions to gain credibility, just by impressing upon them that I’ve taken the time to learn about them and their industry.”

Asked for specific questions that lead directly toward areas where his offerings can deliver added value, Moreau suggests asking customers to visualize a sort of business utopia.

“I ask questions to find out where they are with current suppliers,” he says. “I’ll say, ‘What aren’t you getting from your current supplier that you know you can’t get but wish you could? What’s an ideal-world situation?’ Then, ‘What if you could get that? Would it be worth another $.50 or $1.00?’ Have them put a value on it. So then you take that information and store it away until you’re hammering out a deal. ‘I know you’re very price conscious, but you do recognize the value of quality of service, because when we met three weeks ago you said you’d be willing to spend X amount more to get that.'”

Moreau has also found that effective questioning can help him qualify out prospects he’d rather not add to his client list.

“Not every potential customer is right for us as a business,” he explains. “If we’re willing to lower our price by $1.50 they may be very willing to switch. But that’s not the type of customer we want, because next year when the contract is up someone else will come in and offer $2.25 less and they’ll switch again. That type of customer doesn’t recognize value, so why go through all that for a customer that’s going to leave in 12 months anyway? So, questions can not only reveal objections the customer has about our product, but they can also spotlight problems we might have with the customer.”

Before going on a sales call Moreau feels it’s important to plan a sequence of questions that will lead the customer to a prepared conclusion. Nonetheless he also believes in remaining flexible and allowing the conversation to flow naturally.

“I arrange all my questions in a way that’s logical for that sales call,” Moreau explains. “But rather than interrogating the customer I like to ask a lot of open-ended questions in a conversational style. So the customer might spit out answers to four of my last five questions right up front. I have to adapt and say, ‘OK, he’s answered the last four but I still have 10 others I need answers to and if I continue to listen then this guy is probably going to tell me in an order that makes sense for him.'”

Zwiercan agrees that an overly orchestrated planned sequence of questions can prove laborious on an actual sales call.

“I do have an agenda before I come in, but I’m not married to it,” he says. “If there is a sequence, it’s that I begin with very wide open-ended questions, then as I gain information about the customer the focus narrows. My questions, while still open-ended, are a little more specific, keying on concerns the customer might have mentioned. So if the customer says she’s had suppliers who couldn’t provide next day service, well that’s a problem I can fix. Then by the end, my questions become entirely closed-ended when I ask yes or no: “Can we do business together?'”