Salespeople – What questions are you asking yourself?

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Are you waiting for your next performance review? Most salespeople get one every quarter and sometimes every week in the form of a commission check. evaluating However, do you spend time self-evaluating yourself? Do you have a structured method to take an objective look at yourself? Here is a short list of questions derived from a the book Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others,3rd Edition that I have paraphrased to fit the format of a salesperson.

1.  What am I learning about myself and others in sales?

2.  What makes my sales approach most potent?

3.  What in sales makes me most uncomfortable? (Probably the most growth can happen here.)

4.  From a sales perspective, what is becoming more mysterious about customers?

5.  What am I discovering about the relationships I form with customers?

6.  What ideas of mine are being challenged in a sales call? In the sales process?

7.  What mood of mine seems to work best in front of a customer?

8.  What don’t I understand about my customer? What does this show me about myself?

9.  Am I doing the same thing I ask others to do? If not, how do I justify this?

 Questions to ask at the end of a sales process:

10.  What did I learn about sales?

11.  What did I learn about my competence as a salesperson? What are my strengths? In what way can I improve?

12.  What surprised me?

13.  In what was I flexible? In what was I rigid?

14.  What does that show me about myself?

15.  What can I take to my next sales opportunity?

This effort is probably better done with a coach. However, I would not hesitate to start keeping a diary of these for your own personal reference. I am sure there are many others questions that you might consider. When I review these, there seems to be too many, and I would actually take a few away and get the list down to four or five. However, what I do like about these is that you as a salesperson have complete control over the outcomes. There is nothing stopping you to get started. Might I need to read number 9 again though?

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Joseph Dager
Business901 is a firm specializing in bringing the continuous improvement process to the sales and marketing arena. He has authored the books the Lean Marketing House, Marketing with A3 and Marketing with PDCA. The Business901 Blog and Podcast includes many leading edge thinkers and has been featured numerous times for its contributions to the Bloomberg's Business Week Exchange.

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