Using Comparison Questions to Gain Customer Insight

The comparison question is a crucial part of your selling skills arsenal. It can open up several avenues to further the sales call discussion, such as events in your customer’s past and hopes for his future. It can help you gain access to an organization’s inner workings — uncovering conflicting interests among its employees. Here’s how to change an ordinary question into a comparison question:

Ordinary Question — “What are your goals?”

Comparison Question — “What do you want to accomplish in the next twelve months compared to where you were one year ago.”

Unlocking an ordinary question into a full-blown comparison question gives you more to work with. Once you open those doors to your customer, you’ll showcase a vast range of business solutions for him and for you. Separate yourself from the pack of the ordinary by asking extraordinary sales questions.

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Paul Cherry

For over two decades, sales expert and author PAUL CHERRY has helped B2B sales professionals close more deals in all major industries. As a recognized thought leader in customer engagement strategies, Paul Cherry has been featured in more than 250 publications, including Investor’s Business Daily, Selling Power, Inc., Sales & Marketing Management, The Kiplinger Letter, and Salesforce.

Performance Based Results

Paul Cherry is the president of Performance Based Results. PBR delivers intense, customized sales team training programs and sales management coaching to companies throughout North America. Paul has worked with more than 1,200 organizations, including 175 of the Fortune 500, plus more than a thousand entrepreneurial, small to mid-sized, cutting-edge businesses looking to dominate their niche markets. Clients typically get 7 times their return-on-investment (ROI) or better.

Questions That Sell

Paul Cherry’s top-rated bestseller, Questions That Sell: The Powerful Process for Discovering What Your Customer Really Wants (AMACOM) has been listed on BookAuthority’s “100 Best Sales Books of All Time” and has been published in four languages. He is also the author of Questions That Get Results (Wiley) and The Ultimate Sales Pro (HarperCollins Leadership).

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