Quiz: Can You Move the Sale Forward?

Ineffective questions are a common sales mistake. Such questions slow the sale down and can kill a deal entirely, if there are too many of them. Here's a quick quiz to see if you know what makes a question effective.

SCENARIO: You just made a cold call to a lead who seems interested in what you have to offer. However, to move the sale forward, you need to gather more information. Here are six questions that you might ask:

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The LEAST effective question: "Is this feature/benefit important or unimportant to you."
Here's why.

The other five questions are open-ended. They're conversation starters that allow you to assess the prospect's interest level and start a brief information-gathering conversation.

By contrast, asking about the importance of a feature or benefit is assuming that you've already established the customer's needs and matched them to your offering.

In essence, you're asking the customer to do the heavy lifting of understanding why your offering (and its features and benefits) are important to them.