The rookies in sales are easily separated from the sales professionals based on the frequency and tone of the questions they asked. It says in the bible that Samson slew 10,000 Philistines with the jaw bone of an ass. An equal number of sales are lost each day by the same weapon, salespeople talking when they should be listening. When I taught sales we had question days. No salesperson could make a statement or they were fined. They had to use a question to get to the same point.

Sometimes I think it all goes back to when we little kids and we brought home that first bit of scribble from kindergarten to show our Moms. Our Moms encouraged us and loved us up and ever since then we have suffered from the delusion that everybody will proud of us if we just do a great presentation. At some point in our sales careers we become confident and came to believe we should impart our sum total of knowledge to our client. Heck, if they see how smart we are they will buy, right….wrong.

For example: Our disability insurance features guaranteed issue of $3000.00 monthly, a first day waiver and a partial disability benefit. That is a statement. Those are great product features, but let us say the same thing and use questions. Our disability features guaranteed issue, would that be important to you? Another feature is first day waiver meaning that when an employee is disabled they do not have to pay the premium, would that be an important feature?