University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
250 Sales Questions To Close The Deal
Book

250 Sales Questions To Close The Deal

Stephan Schiffman
Adams Media, 2005
Buy book or audiobook

Read or listen offline

Amazon Kindle
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Stephan Schiffman, the expert author of many sales titles, supplies a list of focused questions for you to ask during the sales process. He teaches that selling is just that - a process - and that a prospect is someone who is willing to undergo this process with you. Each question assumes that prospects need to "make sense" of the transaction before they will commit to a purchase, including Schiffman’s prime closing query: "It makes sense to me - what do you think?" Therefore, every question is a step on the road to helping the prospect embrace the logic of the deal. Schiffman organizes his questions into six sections beginning with initiating contact and proceeding through the first meeting, scheduling the next step, crafting the presentation, dealing with setbacks and, finally, negotiating the close. The book disperses valuable gems of wisdom between the questions and teaches applicable salesmanship rather than theory. All this makes sense to getAbstract.com. What do you think?

Summary

The Sales Process

Many salespeople have a preconceived notion of the best closing question. These so-called magic questions often sound like: "What do I have to do to get you into a Dodge Viper?" The truth is, this kind of question only works with a prospect who has already decided to buy. It sounds like a sales pitch and may alienate prospects rather than draw them closer to making a purchase. Instead, use an approach that will win business for you: ask a series of intelligent questions as part of a larger sales process.

The "Makes Sense" Sales Model

Think of a sale as the point when your prospect decides to invest in your product or service. That’s great, but the ultimate goal of the relationship between a salesperson and a customer is for the customer to use the salesperson as a resource again and again over time. In the "Makes Sense Selling Model," the sales process progresses as follows:

  1. "Open (takes little time)."
  2. "Gather info (the most time!)."
  3. "Plan (little time)."
  4. "Close (hardly any time!)." This is the point where you ask "ultimately, the only question that matters," which...

About the Author

Stephan Schiffman, a leading sales training expert, is the author of multiple bestsellers, including Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!) and Closing Techniques (That Really Work). His list of clients includes many national and international companies.

Comment on this summary