{"id":275,"date":"2007-12-17T19:30:08","date_gmt":"2007-12-17T19:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wensmedia.com\/\/salesarchive\/permalink\/2007\/12\/17\/143008.html"},"modified":"2007-12-17T19:30:08","modified_gmt":"2007-12-17T19:30:08","slug":"earn-the-right-to-ask-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/uncategorized\/earn-the-right-to-ask-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Earn the Right to Ask Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; One of the things I like best about marketing is the way what works, changes so rapidly. Remember when a furniture store in your market advertised, &lsquo;Nothing to pay for thirty days?&rsquo; It worked!<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But then someone else countered with, &lsquo;nothing to pay for ninety days&rsquo; and then, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t pay till next year.&#8217;<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I&rsquo;m still waiting for the campaign that says, &lsquo;Never pay a dime! Leave the darn debt to your heirs!&rsquo;<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But seriously, our business is no different. The old consultative opening sales line, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to make an appointment to learn about your business&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&rdquo; used to actually get us in the door.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Today the receiver of that over-used door opener is thinking, &ldquo;My time is too valuable to teach you about my business&rdquo; or &ldquo;You want me to teach you in an hour what it took me twenty years to learn?&rdquo; or &ldquo;Yeah, yeah, I took that consultative selling course too.&rdquo; Or worse still, &ldquo;The last guy who told me that just asked questions until he saw an opening to sell his package of the month.&rdquo;<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Recently I had one client say to me, &ldquo;If one more media rep asks me &lsquo;who is your target demographic&rsquo;, I&rsquo;m going to scream!&rdquo;<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In his ground breaking book, <u>Selling to VITO<\/u> (Very Important Top Officer), Anthony Parinello proclaims that today we must &lsquo;Earn the right to ask questions.&rsquo;<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; VITO wants to deal with business equals, not opportunistic sales people. VITO wants you to know more about his target demographic than he does, <u>before<\/u> you make the call.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In his book, <u>What Clients Love<\/u>, Harry Beckwith suggests account executives need to &ldquo;touch&rdquo; the client in a meaningful way seven times before the client will trust you enough to give you honest and candid answers to the important questions about his goals and objectives.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Isn&rsquo;t it time you went beyond old-fashioned consultative selling techniques and developed a &ldquo;seven touches&rdquo; plan to build customer trust and loyalty? Or do you still want to use the same tired approaches as you competitors?&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"border-right: medium none; padding-right: 0cm; border-top: medium none; padding-left: 0cm; padding-bottom: 0cm; border-left: medium none; padding-top: 0cm; border-bottom: medium none; text-align: center\" align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><strong><em><span lang=\"EN-US\">Contact <\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/span><strong><em><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size: 11pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><a href=\"mailto:wayne@wensmedia.com?subject=Please%20contact%20me%20about%20my%20sales%20team&amp;body=How%20can%20I%20take%20them%20to%20the%20next%20relationship%20level%20with%20their%20clients\">wayne@wensmedia.com<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><span lang=\"EN-US\"> to inquire how your sales team can learn how to take their client relationships to the next level. We guarantee a minimum 5 to 1 return on your consulting and training investment.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; One of the things I like best about marketing is the way what works, changes so rapidly. Remember when a furniture store in your market advertised, &lsquo;Nothing to pay for thirty days?&rsquo; It worked! &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But then someone else countered with, &lsquo;nothing to pay for ninety days&rsquo; and then, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t pay till next year.&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}