By: Antonio Garrido

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The common sales process goes something like this: 

• Find someone, anyone, who might be ever so slightly interested in what you do/sell/make/offer/promote.
• Beg for an appointment.
• Show up and throw-out everything you know about your product or service, finding clever ways to cram as many features and benefits as you can into the time your prospect grants you.
• Agree to give your prospect everything that can possibly be asked for—if not for free, then damn close.
• Attempt a cunning closing technique or two.
• Smile as sweetly as possible.
• Keep talking fast enough, loudly enough, and engagingly enough to keep your prospect off-balance for long enough.
• Repeat the above with as many live prospects as possible.
• Chase, and chase, and chase—and hope and pray for the very best.

Luckily for us, there's a better way.

Join us for the next 12 minutes as we explore the seven stages of the Sandler Selling System and the questions you can ask to become a more effective sales person.

1. Bonding and Rapport

Bonding and rapport in the Sandler world require getting a few critical things right.

First, you need a strong sense of who you are. You need to understand how people view you, have a grasp on what your worldview is, and know your strengths and weaknesses better than anybody else. This will allow you to understand how your prospects will perceive you throughout the sales process.

Second, you need to have a highly-tuned emotional and situational radar. You need to be able to quickly and accurately read how the prospect is feeling at each stage of the sales process. 

Third, you need a good deal of style flexibility. Each prospect is going to be different, and your ability to meet them where they are will be critical to your success. As Garrido says, you have to learn to be a social chameleon.

Fourth, you need professional humility. Not the kind you fake for the first few minutes so that you can "finally get down to business." People with humility are genuinely interested in other people's point of view, and this manifests itself in asking a lot of questions. 

Finally, once you've got those basics down, you need to be able to quickly gain the trust of your prospect. This is easier said than done, but great trust-based questions can help in the bonding and rapport process.

Here are some examples:

"After I know a bit more about your company and what you're trying to achieve, if I don't think I would be the best solution for you, would you be OK if I maybe suggested a couple of my competitors who might be a better fit?"

"So that I can be sure we are both on the same page: Other than price, which is always very important to all of my clients of course, what other criteria do you typically use when selecting new suppliers? If I don't believe we are going to be very effective in those key areas in, say, your boss's eyes, I'd rather tell you up front than risk any embarrassment for you later. Are you comfortable with that?"

Bonding and rapport is something you work on for the entire sales process, but one of the mistakes that ineffective salespeople make is to spend too much time on it during the actual sales call. 

If your meeting is scheduled for 45 minutes, 5 minutes is more than enough. You might start with a question like the following:

"Thanks again for the invitation, Mark. How are things with you today?" 

Being careful to use your Nurturing Parent voice, which is your most successful sales voice. 

Then, once you've listened actively to the answer and responded appropriately, the real work begins, with the upfront contract.

2. The Up-Front Contract

Garrido suggests that if the sales person and prospect could agree on the following, it would be in everybody's best interest:

• The time, duration and location for the meeting;
• The purpose of the meeting;
• The client's agenda;
• The salesperson's agenda;
• The potential outcomes of the meeting; and
• They agreed to either continue the process or else stop wasting each other's time right then and there.

This is what Sandler calls an Up Front Contract, and it's a powerful tool. Here are some magical questions you ask to do just that (customising them for your own circumstances, of course):

“So, Mark, it sounds to me like it might make sense for you to invite me over so that we can have a face-to-face meeting about the new manufacturing plant that you’re planning. Is that fair?” The key words here are “invite” and “fair”—don’t forget them, they are very powerful words. Use them whenever you can.

“So, Tom, exactly where and when would be best for us to meet?” 

“Let’s just agree on our top most-important items on the agenda. Is that fair?” 

“Just so that we make sure that we are both on the same page, let’s agree on what the next steps might look like if we’re a good fit. Are you comfortable with this?” 

“Experience tells me that we will be able to figure out in maybe 10–15 minutes whether or not we are a good fit. If we’re still talking after about 40 minutes, we’ll probably want to begin the process of working out how we can do some business together. Does that sound fair?”

"Are you planning to invite any others to the meeting?” 

“Typically for the first meeting we find the best way to go about it is if I ask you a some questions around the issue—you know, to try to see the business issue through your eyes. Are you OK with that?” 

“Is there anything else you think we need to add to the agenda?” 

Once you've got an Up Front Contract for a meeting, we move into the next stage of the Sandler submarine and start exploring the prospect's pain.

3. Pain

Pain is the gap between where people are and where they want to be. And every sale is instigated by the prospect's belief that they will feel better once they purchase your product or service and it is implemented. 

There are three levels of pain:

• Intial or surface pain;
• Pain as it impacts or relates too on a business level; and
• Pain as it impacts or relates too on a personal level. 

The first pain a prospect will mention will most likely be a surface pain. At this stage, your job is to get the prospect talking with a few probing questions:

"Tell me a little more about what you have experienced - why are we even talking right now?"

"What's the one thing you wish were better with your current provider?"

As the prospect opens up about the surface pain they are experiencing, your job is to get them to expand on the issue, digging deeper into the pain as it relates to the business (level two pain). Using probing questions such as these will help you uncover level two pain points:

"How long has this been a problem?'

"What have you tried to do about it? Did that work?"

"How much do you think that this has cost you in lost opportunity or revenues - or threatened loss in revenue over the next few months?"

At this point, you are now starting to approach the real pain. There are financial consequences for not dealing with the problem, which almost certainly have personal implications for the prospect. Here again, probing questions such as these will help you get at this type of pain:

"How would you feel if the revenue losses continued to occur?"

"Would it affect your own performance review if this happened?"

"Have you given up trying to fix this?"

Once you've walked through all of these pain levels, you'll have the prospect in a place where they want (and need) to take action to resolve their pain.

4. Budget

Now that we have them in a place where they feel the need to take action, it's time to start moving the discussion towards the budget. Remember, there's a big difference between a prospect who is willing to take action, and a prospect who is willing and able to do so.

Here are some questions you'll ask at this stage to determine which type of prospect you are dealing with.

• "What kind of investment were you expecting to make for this project, Tom?"
• "To use a hotel analogy, were you expecting to make a 1,2,3,4 or 5-star investment for this, Jamie?"
• "Will you share with me the sort of range where this budget might start and then go up to in your past experience on projects like this, Sam?"

Once you have a good sense of their budget, and assuming that it is large enough to help solve their issue, we move to the last stage of the qualifying process.

5. Decision

During this stage of the Sandler submarine, we are looking to (a) determine whether or not the prospect qualifies to receive a detailed presentation, (b) disqualify the prospect (in which case they don't get a presentation), or (c) determine who else needs to be involved in the process in order to move it forward.

Here are some questions that will help you make that call:

• "When would you like to see the benefits of solution implemented delivered, or in place?"
• "What should the presentation I need to make look like?"
• "Where should it happen?"
• "Who will be there at the presentation?"
• "Why does it all have to be done this way?"

If you don't have a clear picture of what happens after you give your proposal and quote, or if the prospect is wishy-washy about the details of implementation, this is the time to disqualify them.  Anything else is free consulting, which is a very bad way to grow your business.

6. Fulfilment

Once you've determined that your prospect qualifies for a presentation and quotation, it's time to deliver on that. The questions you ask at this stage - during the presentation - must relate directly to the pains they described in the pain step.

At each stage of the presentation, you need to gauge their temperature and ask them after each point if what are you showing them is what they were hoping to see, and correct course if it's not.

7. Post-Sell

After you've made the sale, Sandler recommends you deal with any potential buyers remorse, head on.

To do so, before the contract is signed, you should ask something like the following:

"Can I tell you my biggest fear, Terri? I'm worried that I might have pressured you into this deal. Could that be true?" 

This will either seal the deal, or flush out any possible reasons for backing out or roadblocks, avoiding the all-too-common experience of getting back to the office and hearing that "something has come up" on the prospect's end.

You should also prepare your prospect for what they will say to their boss and your competitor when they find out you and the prospect are doing business.

'What will you say when (name of competitor) decides to drop their price at the last minute to buy your loyalty?"

"What do you think your boss will say to you when you tell them that you've decided to go with us? And what will you say to that?"

Bonus: Reversing

Before you set out and start deploying the Sandler Selling System, there's one more powerful technique to learn that will help you at every stage. It's called "reversing," and it's all about discovering the intent of a statement before responding. 

For instance, let's say that you work for a logistics company that ships across the United States. The prospect asks you a fairly innocuous question like:

“So, tell me. Do you ship overnight to Richmond, and can you collect directly from the dockside at Baltimore harbour?” 

If you directly answer the question, it dead-ends the entire conversation and you didn't learn anything. There are a number of reversing techniques you could use, and here's how you might have answered that question with a question of your own.

• The Negative Reverse “Good question: I don’t suppose you’d want to share with me why those two things are important to you at this moment, would you?” 
• The Start-Stop Reverse “Glad you asked me that. In actual fact, we do collect every day from…wait, hold on a second. Tell me, why do you ask?” 
• The Strip-Line Reverse “What is it about Baltimore to Richmond that everyone’s so excited about?” 
• The Presumptive-Question Reverse: “I’m guessing that you are asking me specifically because most of your customers are in Richmond and most of your freight comes into the US through Baltimore. Is that about right, or am I missing something?” 
• The Most-Important Reverse “I imagine that both are pretty important, but let me ask you this. Which is most important of the two, and why?” 
• The Dummy-Up Reverse “OK, I wasn’t quite expecting that question. I’m not sure, but I’d be happy to go check. Is it really important to you that we can?” 
• The Let’s-Pretend Reverse “Nice question: I’m not saying we can, but what might that mean to you if we could or couldn’t?” 
• The Competitive-Edge Reverse “That’s such a super question I’m guessing you asked for a reason—if so, why?” 
• The Key-Strategy Reverse “Why are those two specific things tied to your key business strategy going forward?”