Page 73 - Training 2019

“Is there a specific challenge that is holding back your business?”

A prospect can easily answer this with a yes/no. By focusing on a specific problem, it

discourages prospects from talking about their businesses.

In fact, there’s a simple way to differentiate between an open-ended and a closed-

ended question: the former tends to start with words like “what”, “why”, and “how”.

Open-ended questions essentially do three things:

 They help you understand a business better

 They help you build rapport with a prospect

 They help kickstart more meaningful discussions

What are closed-ended sales questions?

Closed-ended questions, as you might have guessed, are the opposite of open-

ended questions.

That is, they are designed to get short, specific answers, not initiate long

discussions.

For example, “Which option would you like to start with?” is a close-ended question.

A prospect can answer it with a single word.

Closed-ended questions typically start with a verb like “are”, “is”, “did”, etc. Like:

 Is this a good time to talk?

 Did you receive my quote by mail?

 Think of any question that can be answered with a yes/no - you can classify it as a

closed-ended question.

SALES TRAINING – IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES 9
Updated - 24 June 2019