Sales Questioning Skills: Make Your Own Luck

Have you seen the amazing video of Emil, a Wheel of Fortune contestant making an extremely lucky guess….and winning $45,000 in the process? It’s really worth the watch – take a look.

I’ve watched that video a couple of times to determine how much was luck and how much was skill. I’m going with 99.5% luck. Pat Sajak frisked him as if he had the answer tucked away!

What does a lucky guess on Wheel of Fortune have to do with sales questioning skills?

Consider your sales presentation. How often do you guess at a customer’s needs, hoping you get it right? Happens every day in the world of sales. In fact, every time you share a feature that is not specifically tied to something you already know about your prospect, you run the risk of employing a luck-based strategy.

Let me ask you this: Do you really want to bank your sales success on a series of lucky guesses? In many markets over the past year, you might’ve been able to skate by with this strategy. Surely your luck will run out sooner or later and we all know a hot market won’t last indefinitely.

Okay…so what’s a better strategy? Get curious and dig deep. Ask questions (and follow-up questions) that other salespeople are not asking. If you’re familiar with the 4:2 Formula you already know that you must first learn about where the customer is coming from.

Here’s a simple example to get you started. Why are you thinking about moving? This should be the first question after some brief rapport-building conversation.

Great sales questioning skills require you to boldly dive deeper into your customer’s mission than anyone else. Every new inquiry gives you another letter on the board and gets you closer to changing your customer’s world.

Luck is not a strategy. Curiosity is.


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About the Author: Jeff Shore

Jeff Shore is the Founder and CEO of Shore Consulting, Inc. a company specializing in psychology-based sales training programs. Using these modern, game-changing techniques, Jeff Shore’s clients delivered over 145,000 new homes generating $54 billion in revenue last year.