Salespeople need to go deeper on sales calls. Prospects make problem statements or give information describing how bad a situation is. Salespeople accept those statements and move the conversation forward often without uncovering how serious the problem is or how valid. It is important for salespeople to dig deeper to get to the real pain and they struggle with how to that without sounding like they are prying or being pushy. A simple way to simultaneously get to a deeper level and validate that the problem is worthy of addressing while at the same time appearing merely conversational and not pushy is to ask a simple question. When they make a statement of what purports to be fact just ask “how do you know”. Or you can ask “what do you base that on”. Sometimes you find that there is no basis for the statement, it is only opinion and sometimes the question leads to further discussion about the origin of the problem and hence it’s severity. When asked with the proper tonality (honest curiosity, humility), it will never get you in trouble and it will enrich the conversation.
