Maybe you aren't asking the right questions in the right order for the right reason? Asking the right questions is definitely a skill and the best sales people are very adept at it. Most sales people ask the easy questions that don't promote their sales success. Are you asking questions that you could easily already know the answer to? If you are that's a big and annoying mistake. Contrary to popular belief not all people just love talking about themselves, and business owners and upper executives have no patience for educating you.

Are you asking irrelevant questions? These are questions that have no bearing on the actual sales conversation. While you may think these questions are helping you to establish rapport they may just be annoying the other person because they aren't giving you an appointment so you can waste their time.

Spend very little time on background questions and more of your time on questions that help both you and the prospect to gain clarity about their problem. You should know your solution well enough to know the kinds of problems it will resolve and ask questions that show case your solution. Don't be afraid that the prospect won't want to share the answer to these questions with you because they will.

In order for a sale to occur the buyer must have a perceived problem, and they must believe your product or service is the solution to that problem. The problem solution relationship must exist for any sale to occur whether it's for a high end seemingly unnecessary service or a commodity. The difference is related to the speed of the decision process as a buyer will purchase a commodity with little if any thought, but they will not purchase an expensive product or service as quickly or easily unless you help them to see your solution as being almost a no choice choice.

A sale won't happen unless both you and the prospect have clarity about the prospect's perceived problem. When you set the appointment the prospect may have agreed to meet with you because they're just in the beginning stages of gathering information to determine if they really want to make this purchase. Whether they're in the information gathering stage or the final selection stage your job is to help them to uncover exactly why they want to make the purchase, and why they want to make the purchase now.

After you both have clarity about the perceived problem then your questions need to take the prospect beyond the problem and expand on how your solution would benefit them in ways they may not have thought about. The prospects motivation to buy increases as you to this because this sales technique helps them to become emotionally invested in the purchase. Plus you're helping them to develop the logical reason for making the purchase now. There's one more step though that you have to make in your questioning process.

The final step is to help them to determine how your solution is more valuable than the money you're asking them for in exchange. When they were telling you about how your solution benefited them in ways they hadn't thought about you began uncovering this on. To wrap up the sale though you now need to help them to articulate the value of your solution is less than the money you're asking for. At that point you have a sale because you've both come to the same conclusion at the same time.