The three question formats for sales questions and the order you should ask them

The number one trait that every Ag sales professional tells me they do not want to be is “Salesy”.

Yet most salespeople approach their sales calls in a very salesy manner – they begin their sales call by presenting their products or highlighting their sale of the month.  A big part of the reason is that producers are good at getting us to spill our sales guts.  “I’m busy, what do you got for me today?”  or “What’s your price on potash?”  Then we jump right into our sales pitch.

Or, we go too far the other way and attempt not to use a selling approach at all – “I just go out there and get to know them.”  While we do want to get to know our customers, this method can lead to a long discussion that goes nowhere.

A skilled sales approach is designed to use discovery questions before presenting any solution to a customer. 

Good discovery questions allow you to uncover needs or desired changes that a producer might be looking for.

However, we may not feel comfortable asking some of these deep diving questions as they can appear pushy or intrusive.  That’s why the format of the questions and the sequence are so important.