The Evolution of Questions in Selling

One of the most important skills in selling is questioning! With the advent of The Challenger Sale by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson the importance of questioning seemingly diminished.  They positioned that the questioning, typically used in the needs diagnosis/discovery phase of the typical consultative sale provided little value to the customer and prospect and led to a condition they called "questioning fatigue."  They proposed that successful sales people, like the  challenger profile, shared insight with the prospect.  The discovery was not conducted with questions but rather with what they called "hypotheses." The research of the Challenger was so compelling that many of us in an attempt to change to its insight principles "threw the baby out with the  bath water.".  The subsequent writing of Linda Richardson puts it best in her latest book Changing The Sales Conversation, when she writes: "It is the combination of questions and insights that is one of the distinguishing marks of the new sales conversation." It might be useful to look at the evolution of questions in selling to see how we got to this point.

The earliest sales conversations used closed ended questions or those that could be simply answered by 1 or 2 word answers such as yes or no.  This occurred frequently up until the 1970's because before this time sales conversations were heavily scripted and closed ended questions stayed with the script.  In the 70's sales leaders such as Neil Rackham and and Linda Richardson  introduced SPIN Selling and consultative selling which introduced the use of open ended questions.  Rackham in SPIN Selling introduced a progression of questions: Situation questions, Problem questions, Implication  questions and Need- Payoff questions that helped the client/prospect discover the value of the product/solution.  Richardson's consultative approach also used a variety of questions open as well as closed .  The SPIN, consultative, solution selling was very successful through the 70's, 80's, 90's and the 2000's.  With the world financial crisis, starting in 2008, the world of selling turned upside down.  The techniques that had worked so well for the previous  four decades no longer were effective.  Enter The Challenger Sale research, in 2012, by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), which, as we stated earlier, talked of questioning fatigue and replaced questions with hypotheses and insights.

Also we have now seen a new type of question introduced, the disruptive question.  The disruptive question is just that one that is disruptive.  It is designed to move the prospect out of their comfort zone.  For a prospect to buy they have to be in the proper mindset.  They must believe the problem/challenges introduced in the insight are real and affect them.  You need to emotionally connect with the buyer.  The disruptive question is often the first step in this process. Typical disruptive questions start with why or how.

Since 2012 the subsequent writings of Linda Richardson and the research by the RAIN group in, Insight Selling Selling : Surprising Research on What Winners Do Differently by Mike Schultz and John Doerr, the reactive changes we made as a result of The Challenger have been softened .  Solution selling and questioning are not "dead."  However, they have been modified by what we learned from the Challenger research.  The key point is that we,as sellers in this new age, must show insight, unique ways of looking at situations/problems.  Questioning is fine as long as it is coupled with that insight and creates value for the customer/prospect.

For a more detailed look a The Evolution of Questioning in Selling go to : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rNy5AyQEQQ