NOTE: Pam and I are psychologists, so, we ask a lot of questions. As business psychologists, we ask different questions. As trainers and coaches, we teach professionals the right way to ask questions. This is truly a vital skill. Your ability to ask the right questions at the right time determines the degree of receptivity you'll get from your prospects. The key to your sales success is NOT your ability to explain your products; it IS your ability to ask questions!

Why Use Questions?

You want to use questions because they work! Asking the right kind of question at the right time can get people to listen to you, when they wouldn't otherwise want to. Learn to ask the right questions, and you can turn a negative situation into a positive one. And, while those are all positive outcomes, here's one even better - the person who asks the questions controls the situation.

If you're only using the basic fact-finding questions, you're losing a huge opportunity to improve results! If you're asking those big, open-ended questions, you could be shooting yourself in the foot. But, for now, let's look at why you should care to ask the right questions at the right time.

What Do Questions Do for You?

1. Questions help build rapport and trust. They show people you're listening to them and are genuinely interested in what they have to say. Questions provide a perfect way to introduce yourself, your services and tie those services directly to what matters most to your client.

2. Questions help people self-discover you. This is a critically important variable in the effectiveness of any communication. Simply telling me about a feature or benefit will have far less influence on me than if I discover it myself. Questions enable the self-discovery process. They get people to persuade themselves, and research shows that approach to be most effective. The bottom line - People believe what they say not what you say. But, changes are slim that they'd say it unless you ask the right questions to give them the opportunity.

3. Questions help keep you focused. Questions lead to quality listening. They make it easier for you to concentrate on what's most important in the situation, and they help keep you focused. When you focus on the answers, it's much easier to see opportunities to ask follow-up questions.

4. Questions enhance your credibility. They make you look smart, self-confident, interesting and interested in who you're talking to. They give you an opportunity to show your wisdom, expertise and experience without pontificating or running off at the mouth.

How Do Questions Work?

What is it about questions that makes them so effective? In order to understand how questions work, let's look at what happens in our brains when someone asks us a question.

1. We are compelled to answer. There's something in our makeup as humans that causes a sort of automatic answering reflex to kick in the instant we hear a question. It's related to our need for completion. A question is like a joke without a punch line. It's incomplete without an answer, and the other person starts to fill in the blanks to complete it..

Warning: The question must be the right kind of question, asked at the right time. Otherwise, you risk invading the prospect's personal space.

"Our old brain that's been around for millions of years, is the part that runs by instinct. That's the part that animals have. They don't ask questions. The purpose of our 'new brain' is to override and challenge our old brain and we do that by asking questions."