4 Questions to Improve Sales Performance

When you are trying to get your reps to sell larger deals, improving their discovery skills is critical.

Great questions lead to great answers.

Great answers lead to information that helps elevate your deal size.

Below are four key questions to share with your reps that will help improve sales performance.

How do you handle “X” right now?

Asking a customer to tell you about their problem typically produces a general surface-level perspective. Greener reps tend to pick up on this initial cue and jump right into the solution they’re trying to sell. More accomplished sellers dig deeper for enhanced understanding.

When you understand the process that’s happening now, you can better align your solutions to the current state. Without effectively uncovering this information, you have no chance at aligning your solution to the buyer’s needs.

What does it look like when it goes well?

When in doubt, go with the positive. Asking the prospect to share what’s working well often opens the door for you to ask about the opposite (what’s not going well).

Once you understand the current process, then ask what’s working well.

• When this process works well, what does that look like?


• What outcomes do you achieve?

Asking about the positive earns you the right to then pivot to the challenges the prospect may be experiencing. It also provides you the opportunity to validate and reinforce any current success. Here’s an example:

“Wow, those are impressive growth numbers. It’s not easy to achieve those metrics in such a short time. Has that fast success led to any challenges?”

How quickly do you need to solve this problem to avoid more serious consequences?

A problem without a sense of urgency can lead to hesitation, delayed decisions and even inaction. The goal of this type of question is establishing a sense of urgency. By doing so, you can enhance your offering and potential deal size by creating the compelling event that encourages faster decisions.

Who else has a stake in this?

There are often multiple decision-makers with any large purchasing decision which likely means many people have a stake in a successful solution. You may have more meetings to set up, but the more you align your solution with the requirements of multiple departments and decision-makers, the larger the impact of your solution and the larger the deal.

Source: B2C