Since day one of your sales career, you’ve probably been taught to ask open-ended questions of your customer and get them talking. In fact, “ask questions and listen to the customer” has almost become a cliché. So much so, that I think the typical security salesperson is leaving their customer starving for information – especially the very good performers.
Don’t get me wrong… asking your customer questions is very important. However, your world has changed. No longer can you build a relationship with the security director and make a nice living. Security decisions are being made by multiple people within organizations and none of them have time to answer the typical “what keeps you up at night” questions anymore. In the 1990s that was novel, but so was the fax machine.
Today, the security sales professional has to create the perception of expertise. You have to bring valuable information that will help your customers, or they won’t need you. You should still be prepared to ask the right questions and let the customer talk. However, you need to bring information to the meeting and open the meeting with this source of info before jumping into your questioning. It can be as simple as: “We’ve been working with many community hospitals and have learned that they are experiencing challenges in IT costs. Here are some numbers we’ve uncovered. We’ve worked with our partners to develop a solution to these challenges and would like to ask some questions to see if we might be able to help your group. Is that ok?”
Letting the customer talk is never the wrong thing to do, but asking them questions and letting them talk without giving them something first will only teach you about their scenario. Why not give them something of value first, and then learn about their scenario? If you do, I bet you get the call the next time they have a challenge.
