“If your discovery calls sound like checklists, sounds like interrogations, start making them sound more like interviews. ” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 439
What about your discovery calls? Are they interviews or are they interrogations?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jeff Bajorek is back with his weekly dose of wisdom. Here he is:
Jeff Bajorek: Can we talk about discovery calls for just a minute, maybe two minutes? Are they interviews or are they interrogations? There’s a key distinction there. An interview is a conversation between two people. One of those people typically both of those people at some point will ask questions of one another and they’ll wonder where the answers are going to take them and then based on where that answer takes them, they’ll ask another question. And out of this question and answer period this mutual respect, this is listening, this empathy, this knowledge, this expertise that is shared and exchanged.
A beautiful conversation happens and when beautiful conversations happen, connections are made when connections are made, empathy and vulnerability and all those things come together and hopefully if there is a good fit between the situation that the prospect is in and the solution that the seller has, hopefully, there’s a good fit there for a customer, vendor relationship a customer, company relationship, maybe even a friendly relationship can grow out of that if you solve enough of the right problems together.
Well, let’s talk about the other one. Let’s talk about the interrogations. Let’s talk about the discovery calls that go something like ask a question, listen for the answer, move right to the next question without really caring where the answer is. You ever go back and listen to some of your calls or you listen to some of your colleague’s calls or if you’re a manager and you’re probably not spending enough time actually listening to calls so you can develop your team, but listen to some discovery calls.
Does it sound as if the salesperson is actually doing anything with the information that they receive or are they just checking boxes because they asked the question and got an answer? Are they asking questions that they already know the answer to but they want to make sure that there’s common ground between the two people having a conversation even though the exchange really doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and the answers really don’t seem to be dictating the next question?
Think about how you develop your connections with your prospects. Think about how they feel. Sure. I know you got to get your information and I know you’ve got to be efficient and I know you got a lot of calls to make today and this one’s on your schedule and you only have 29 and a half minutes because you got another one at the top of the hour and you got to go, go, go. Be efficient, be efficient. You can’t be efficient with people. You can be efficient with everything else, but you can’t be efficient with your relationships. And so if your discovery calls sound like checklists, sounds like interrogations, start making them sound more like interviews. Notice and recognize what that does with your relationship, what it does with your reputation, and what it does with your ability to make sales to those people and the next people that you talk to and the people that they will tell. Because there’s a huge difference between an interrogation and an interview and your customers know the difference.
Scott Ingram: If you enjoy Jeff’s tips and you’re not already getting his emails. Well first you should probably do that, and we’ll have links for you at DailySales.Tips/439, but you should ask him about his Rethink The Way You Sell Community.
After you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!