RSSWhat are questions for?
Feb 18, 2010 Sales Related
Lately, I’ve noticed many people using the term Facilitative Questions when they really mean facilitating questions: they are using questions to help people think things through, to add some new thoughts that might persuade or influence them to consider different options. In sales, they are often used to get prospects to think about ‘needs’ in a way that might influence them to consider purchasing the potential vendor’s solution.
Facilitative Questions are used to help people re-weight their unconscious criteria so they can make new decisions that possibly achieve a new level of excellence according to their own standards – they do not influence, manipulate, push/pull, or bias in any way. Nor do they use ‘information’ as a basis.
Information – having it, sharing it, or receiving it – does not teach someone how to make a new decision: we (and our prospects) make decisions in accordance with our unique, private, weighted criteria that are sometimes (often) unconscious. And until or unless any new decision choices are agreed to by our status quo, no change will take place no matter how necessary.
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Tags: criteria, decision, Facilitative Questions, questions
Asking The Hard Questions: Jim Altfeld
Jul 21, 2009 Favorite URLs
If you want to find out if you’ve done what you need to do, will get the results you want, have a look at these two links – I think they are very useful:
Tags: change, collaboration, connection, decision making, hard questions, innovate, Jim Alfeld, questions
Why Are Questions Important?
Jun 24, 2009 Sales Related
Since 1989, I’ve been writing about, teaching, and extolling the virtues of questions. Although I’ve developed a new form of question (the Facilitative Question) that uses Decision Facilitation and brain sequencing to help folks recognize all layers of criteria that need to be met to make a new decision
(Facilitative Questions don’t gather data: they help the brain think and are used in sequence to how brains decide. Example: How would you know when it was time to reconsider your hairstyle? teaches the brain how to think about When, If, Why, How, Who needs to be in the consideration process.)
and use conventional questions just to gather/share data, I recognize how important even conventional questions are in the sales process. So many sales people use questions manipulatively, as a way to open up the conversation so their solution will be an obvious answer.
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Tags: action selling, assessment tool, contentional questions, decision criteria, Decision Facilitation, Duane Sparks, Facilitative Questions, online training, questions
Presentations: How To Compete When In Front Of A Prospect
Jan 3, 2008 Decisioning & Change Management, Top Posts
Your last presentation was great and seemingly well-received. You addressed the prospect’s needs, positioned yourself and your product just right, used the right language and visuals to assure that you were a caring, smart, professional, and had a product that would obviously be the right solution. The price was right, and you clearly had a leg up on the competition in terms of fit. And, the prospect liked you a lot.
But you didn’t close the deal.
Later you heard lots of conflicting stories: they already had a preferred vendor, the CXO had a friend in one of the competing companies, their inside folks were going to handle it, they decided to do nothing, you were too expensive, the competition came in lower than cost just to get the deal….
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Tags: closing, decision criteria, decision making, information, presentations, prospects, questions, teach
