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Welcome to the Sell or Die podcast.
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I m your host, Jeffrey Gittimer.
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And I m your host, Jen Gittimer.
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Well, in this podcast, we re going to help you attract more qualified, unbelievable, ready-to-buy clients.
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We re going to help you build loyal relationships.
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And the one thing you re hoping for, close more deals.
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Let s get into it.
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It s time to sell or die.
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Welcome back diehard.
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We are glad you are here.
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And we re wondering what in the heck are you doing in daylight savings time?
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And it turns dark at four o clock in the afternoon.
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You think it s night?
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Oh, my goodness.
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You re hungry, but you re not.
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Yeah.
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Jeffrey want to have dinner tonight at like 430.
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I m like, it s only 430.
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And then by the time we got to dinner, it was still only six, but it felt like 9 p.m.
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I mean, it was ridiculous.
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So we are currently in Isle of Palms, South Carolina at the beach.
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And for the past two days, we have been delivering our first inaugural session of the Giddimer Sales Certification.
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And it s going pretty well, don t you think, Jeffrey?
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It s amazing.
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We re certifying people in a process which we re calling assertive selling, but really it s simplified selling.
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There s no manipulation.
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There s no finding the pain.
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There s no sales old world crapola.
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It s just a simple strategy of asking questions, not being pushy, gaining some kind of deep rapport with somebody, finding shared values, earning a friendship or a deeper relationship, and then completing the process.
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It s not, you don t have to close the sale.
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You have to build value.
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Zoe is actually talking to us.
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Zoe s trying to make a sale on getting us to give her a bone.
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I already gave her a swizzler stick, so she s fine.
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Oh, okay.
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So it s really interesting because we ve talked about assertive selling a little bit on the podcast, and we ve talked about, you know, it s not this, it s that.
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It s not, for example, it s not follow-up, it s follow-through.
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It s not being manipulative.
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It s, you know.
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Exactly.
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So we ve talked a little bit about it, but what I want to dive into today, Jeffrey, is one of the topics that we teach on day two, a big portion of the day is on power questions.
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And I d like to share with our diehard what a power question is and how they can use that in their sales.
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Well, a power question is basically something that nobody else is asking that makes that prospect think deeply about what is involved in this, and then sometimes responds in terms of you, sometimes responds in terms of themself, but always responds in a way that is positive or in your favor because of the question that you ask.
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It differs from an engagement question.
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It differs from a rapport question, but not a lot.
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It s a form of a question.
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It s not like a bullshit book.
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Don t say the name now that you called it a bullshit book.
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So, okay, here s the thing.
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It s a book about asking and it s not realistic.
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So let s talk about the difference.
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So a rapport building question or an emotionally engaging question might be used in the beginning of a sale.
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So you go in to meet the customer and you re talking and your famous question is, where did you grow up?
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And we all know Jeffrey loves that question and why, right?
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It s a great, it s a brilliant conversation starter.
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And that s before you get started.
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But when you re in their emotion, because where did you grow up evokes emotion of family and old original home and parents or siblings.
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There s something to that question that goes way deeper than the subtle difference of where are you from?
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And I look at it from the perspective of, I m looking to find something about the person, but I also want to seek if there s something I have in common with them, because I ve traveled all over the world and spent time in every city in the country, major or minor, and I may have something to talk to them about.
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So it has both of those ramifications with me, build deeper rapport and find out who they are.
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So, Diehard, you need to come up with what s your rapport building question.
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And if you re not well-traveled, where did you grow up?
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Might not be your best rapport building question.
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No, it s always a good rapport building question because it always gets to the heart of who they are.
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If you ve stuck in the same city for 28 years, it doesn t matter.
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I still want to know where they grew up.
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I want them to focus on their family.
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I want them to focus on their memories.
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I want them to focus on their siblings.
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I want to know.
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And if they grew up in a small town, I know they re going to be more trusting than someone who grew up in a big city.
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Fair enough.
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So that s at the beginning of the sale before you get into it.
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But when you get into the heat of the sale, instead of just showing up and throwing up, you want to be showing up and asking questions so that you control the conversation.
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and your questions are gonna be better off if you ve thought through them in advance and you ve prepared them in advance so that they are a little bit premeditated is the wrong word, but prepared, okay?
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So that you can ask questions that are in terms of them.
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And so today in this seminar, we went through and everyone got to share two or three power questions.
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And it was so interesting because a lot of times you think the power question that you re asking is a power question and really it s an emotional or engaging question.
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Or a rapport building question.
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Right.
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So let s say I m selling something new and there was something that is replacing, right?
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I can go in and ask, Hey, what do you think about this new thing versus the old thing?
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Or that s not the best question, right?
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Because they re going to say, I don t know.
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I already have an old thing.
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I don t need a new thing.
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Or it seems like there s no big deal.
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or, well, the new thing s really expensive.
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They re going to give you every reason why they don t need it.
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Plus, it s not their job to sell you on why they need it.
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So instead, you want to ask a great question, stop and think, consider new information, and respond in a way that s going to help you move the sale forward.
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So Jeffrey, let s give some examples of some good power questions.
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Die hard.
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Let s talk about something that like a life insurance policy or a copier machine or something that s germane in our society that everybody needs or everybody has and they may have the old thing, the new thing, the wrong thing, the best thing.
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Is that fair?
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Sure.
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So let s give some examples of some power questions.
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Okay.
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Tell me about the last time you purchased a copy machine.
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What happened?
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And tell me about as a big, as a great intro to anything.
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Tell me about why you put the copy machine over there instead of over there.
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Tell me about the time the copy machine broke Friday afternoon at four o clock.
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and you needed a thousand copies.
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Tell me about something that will reveal what your present supplier is doing and you re hoping to do better.
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You re trying to take away business the next sale from that place that you think you re loyal to because you re settled for whoever they are.
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So let s play this out and I m going to be our diehard who s like the doubting Thomas for a second, okay?
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The doubting Diane.
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Okay, so you asked me to tell you about it.
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And I m like, Oh, it s amazing.
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I love my copy machine.
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It always works.
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It s great.
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And it s just every time I need to go print something, it s just boom, it prints.
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So would you be open to me bringing in our machine for free.
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And every time you need to make 100 copies, try your machine.
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And then the next time you need 100 copies, make try my machine and
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Well, let s just see which one works better.
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Fair enough.
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Oh, okay.
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Now I m open.
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That s a side-by-side comparison and you have nothing to lose because I m giving it to you for nothing.
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Now you have to be pretty confident that your machine s going to be better than the one I have.
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And you also have to close the sale at that point.
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And if my machine s better, we talk about how to replace yours.
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Is that fair enough?
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Yes, totally.
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Because what they re going to say is, well, your machine is actually better, but I have a two year contract and I got a three year, you know, whatever the deal is.
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Well, don t worry, we ll buy you out of your contract.
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Yeah, but I think that you have to do it from a perspective of, I want to know in advance if what I m doing is worth it or not.
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Because I m going to get, well, I have a two-year contract.
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So I m going to ask them, when is your current contract up?
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I can prevent that objection completely.
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Or I can just go, well, I did it.
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I got the demo.
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You haven t done a thing.
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Okay, let s do another one.
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Because I think what I saw today was how revealing these power questions are.
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Most people don t have a bank of power questions.
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And when I say a bank of them, I mean five to 10 that are in your back pocket that you can use whenever you need to, to guide the conversation in a way that builds rapport because they re revealing stuff to you, but also in a way that guides the sale in the direction that you want.
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So go for it.
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Well, I m a big believer in the person who buys it may not be the person who uses it.
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So I m a big believer in the collaboration of, would you mind if we brought a couple of people who actually use the copy machine on a regular basis in here or the person that runs the machine or has the motor or does the IT, whatever the thing is, if you are not buying and using,
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If you re only doing one or the other, let s bring both parties together so there can be a collaboration and a truthfulness.
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Or a copy machine works great and then you bring the person in and go, this copy machine blows.
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So I want to get that truth.
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And I want to also create an atmosphere where I get down to the real reasons or the real situations so that I can help them the most.
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I don t sell to make a sale, I sell to help.
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So there was this interesting collaboration today in the sales certification and the Gittimer sales certification, where there was power in them being able to share their power questions and collaborate with other people within the group to get feedback and insight into what other people thought might be good questions, right?
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And fix the question of the guy that was asking.
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Yeah.
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So you want to take your sales team and create power questions together rather than one person does it in a vacuum.
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Oh, totally.
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Or send them to our certification and we ll do it with them.
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But here s the thing.
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So can I talk about one of the questions that occurred?
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Sure.
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Okay.
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So one of the people in attendance today said he had invented this product 10 years ago.
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It was a great product.
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He s now fixed the product because there s new technology, new abilities over, you know, 10 years.
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And he is going in to pitch the new product next week.
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And so what we came up with through collaboration, which I think was pretty good, is a series of questions.
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So for example, how has this product helped you?
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How has it worked for you in the past, however many years that you ve had it?
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And they re going to say, Oh, it s great.
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It, you know, it s worked this way.
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Okay.
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What would you improve about it?
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And they re going to likely say, because there s one thing that needs improvement.
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And that one thing is this screw mechanism that needs improvement.
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And they re likely going to talk about it because it s an experience that everyone has had.
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And so I want you to die hard to be thinking not just about this example, but about how this applies to whatever it is you re selling.
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And so then when the customer talks about what they would improve about it, that s when our attendee can say, Hey, guess what?
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We have actually fixed that in the new version.
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Let me show you what that looks like.
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But there s two ways to go about this.
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Most salespeople would go in there and say, Hey, I know you ve probably been having these issues because we ve seen this experience over the past 10 years and we ve been working on it and we ve been working to fix it.
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But that s showing up and just throwing up about your shit and people aren t as open
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when you go in and just talk about yourself versus when you go in and ask questions and let them talk about them.
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Because when you ask the right questions, they end up selling themselves.
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So when the customer identifies that that s a problem, they re more likely to want to purchase at the end of the conversation or maybe towards the middle of the conversation.
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So we talked about collaborating and the key is to collaborate with the customer and the person who says it s fine may not be the person that uses the machine.
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So I want to get the three machine operators who work it on a regular basis and ask them what s going on.
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They ll reveal everything, and I would ask them how you would improve it.
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I would ask them how you would fix it, and you d say, oh, that s what we have.
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Yeah, I m real concerned about this.
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We have this.
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You don t need to get specific about it, but you do need to identify the fact that there s a flaw, and we ve created an opportunity by fixing it to make it better.
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So I m wanting to make certain that you as the diehard salesperson have uncovered everything you need to uncover in order to be able to make the customer want to buy the new thing rather than try to simply pitch the new thing.
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So diehard, when was the last time you created a list of power questions for your sales?
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This is meta, see what I did there?
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I asked them a power question that would lead to the sales certification.
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So come to our session.
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I think you ll enjoy the hell out of it.
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It s been pretty remarkable up to this point in time, but I m not going to talk about it.
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I m going to let the people who attended the sales certification tell you what they experienced and what happened to them.
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Yeah.
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We ll do that.
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We ll play that on a podcast for sure.
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Or maybe we ll loop it into this.
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We ll talk to them tomorrow.
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We ll get them to pop on as a guest.
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Yeah, that would be really neat.
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Yeah.
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Our next sale certification, in case you re wondering, is in January.
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And we d love to see you there.
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We do have some spots left.
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It s gittmertraining.com slash certify.
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So gittmertraining.com slash certify.
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And you can sign up or you can click to call.
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It calls me.
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So you will be speaking to me and we can have a conversation about whether or not it s a fit for you and your team.
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And I think that s it.
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Is there anything else you want to say about PowerQuestions?
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I want to make certain that your customer utters a statement to you, and this is your challenge as a diehard, that the customer says to you, wow, no one ever asked me that before.
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And that means that you re on the trail or you re on the path to asking questions that are meaningful, that are thought-provoking and are sales-oriented.
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Until then... Until next time, I m Jan Gettemer.
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I m Jeffrey Gittemer, and ask, ask, ask before you tell one word, even if your ass falls off, or even if your ask falls off.
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Very funny, honey.
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Thanks for listening to the show.
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Don t forget to like, share.
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Yeah, share with both your friends.
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And subscribe to the podcast.
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And remember, we have a free 22 day sales challenge.
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Just go to gator.com slash sales challenge to start you on your way.