FOUNDER’S GUIDE TO B2B SALES THE BEST SELLERS ARE CURIOUS The best sellers are curious about everything: the customer, the problem they’re trying to solve, and the processes their customers are following to make their buying decision. Be curious about the customer • At a business level – e.g. their career history, role, duties, relationships, alliances, challenges, and opportunities • At an individual level – e.g. their interests, desires, motivations, and goals Be curious about the problem • What is the problem at hand? • What is the impact of solving it? • How have they previously tried to solve it? Be curious about the process • What other solutions are they considering? • How did they hear about you? • Why are they considering you? • What’s their selection process? • What’s their evaluation criteria? • Where did this criteria come from? • How does their scoring work? • Whose budget is paying for this? • Who needs to sign what documents? • Will they be working on the last day of the quarter? • Have they previously run a purchasing process at this company? With a deal of this size? • Might any recent changes affect the purchase process? • Who might object to signing this order? • What is the business impact of delay? • How is your firm doing in the process? • If they don’t pick you, why would that be? • We’re your top choice, great! Why? ASK OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS The best sellers ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions generally reveal far more information than closed-ended ones and produce a conversation as opposed to an interrogation. Close-ended Examples • Are you evaluating other vendors? (Yes) • Have you established evaluation criteria? (Yes) • Does this problem have any downstream impact? (Yes) Open-ended Equivalents • Tell me about the other vendors you’re evaluating? • I’m curious. How did you arrive at these criteria? • Tell me how this problem impacts others in the organisation? SPRING 2023 .08