Asking the right questions an underrated skill in national business survey
 


Listening is more important in sales than having ‘gift of the gab’ say business leaders

Business decision makers think listening skills are essential for a good salesperson but surprisingly do not rate asking questions as a very important trait, according to new research from sales and negotiation experts Huthwaite International. While 73 per cent of survey respondents consider good listening as important, only 22 per cent think being inquisitive is key for sales success.
 


In the national YouGov survey of business decision makers, the trait cited most frequently as being important in a good salesperson is good knowledge about the product or service (79 per cent).
 


Tony Hughes, CEO at Huthwaite International, comments: “While listening is an important trait for a salesperson, if they don’t ask the right questions what are they listening to? They need to ask questions that open up discussion around the business challenges that the customer is facing. That’s the only way they can identify how they might work together to address these issues.
 


“The danger of placing too much emphasis on product knowledge is that, too often, salespeople will see the sales opportunity as a chance to talk about those products without understanding the customer’s needs and showing how they can be met. As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Salespeople who ask intelligent, probing questions can set themselves apart from the competition and create customer value in the sales process itself,” says Tony.
 


Following being knowledgeable about the product or service and being a good listener, confidence (69 per cent) and enthusiasm (65 per cent) rounded out the top four places of what are considered to be important traits in salespeople.
 


“People rate confidence and enthusiasm in salespeople highly and these often stem from a salesperson believing in their skills as well as their product or service. If they are comfortable with the process of selling and their ability, then that is going to come through in their dealings with customers.”

Being persuasive and flexible are considered by more than two in five decision makers as important traits to be a good salesperson (46 and 43 per cent respectively). And it seems that almost everyone now recognises the well-proven folly of salespeople being pushy, with only two per cent citing being aggressive as an important trait.