Question Based Selling

Five QBS Strategies That Reduce Your Risk
Below are five key strategies you will learn that will minimize your risk of mismatching:

1. Ask More Questions and Make Fewer Statements - Minimizing the mismatching behavior starts with prevention. If you can identify and prevent those things that cause people to mismatch the things you say or do, then you can avoid a negative reaction.

Statements are easily mismatched in conversations because most statements take a definitive position that can easily be disagreed with. While statements can be easily mismatched, questions are not. Questions help diffuse the emotional triggers that fuel the need to mismatch. After all, it’s impossible to disagree with a question.

2. Credibility Reduces the Prospect’s Need to Resist - Establishing credibility should be one of your primary objectives in the sales process. If a salesperson appears credible to the prospective customer, then the prospect’s need to mismatch is reduced because they start feeling comfortable with you, rather than cautious of you. An air of credibility also opens the door to a more productive conversation.

3. Curiosity Neutralizes the Mismatching Reflex - Making prospects and customers curious is the most effective way to engage them in a productive sales conversation. People who are curious will want to hear more about your product or service. When customers ask you a question to satisfy their curiosity, they are actually requesting your help – and it’s impossible to ask for your help and push you away at the same time.

4. Reversing the Positive - The following questions have a negative tone, so when someone answers and takes the opposite position they actually mismatch in your favor. This technique is called reversing the positive.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Am I interrupting?”
“Is next week too soon for a presentation?”
“Will the pricing in this proposal make your boss nervous?”

5. Momentum Helps Reduce the Mismatching Instinct - Most prospective buyers won’t make a buying decision just because the guy down the street decided to take the plunge. They will need more evidence to get convinced. Instead of trying to motivate potential customers with individual references.