A proficiency gap seems to be widening among sales teams—where new business opportunities are increasingly more difficult to come by, and far too many sellers have become complacent (if not lazy) in their commitment to hone their craft.

Today’s selling environment is more difficult. That’s inarguable, especially given the volume of vendor solicitations prospective buyers have to fend off on a daily (if not hourly) basis.

“Customers don’t want to talk to vendors anymore,” is a recurring theme I often hear as I deliver QBS Methodology Training to sales teams all over the world, followed by the sentiment (from salespeople) that… “I would much rather communicate via email or text.”

I get it. Having raised two daughters in the electronics age, I’ve been on the receiving end of countless father-daughter text messages, some as long as my leg. My reply is always the same… ”Call me so we can discuss!” Seconds later, my cell phone rings and we work through whatever the latest drama, tragedy, or cause for celebration is—in a fraction of the time it would take to convey a series of cryptic texts back and forth.

Note that I’m not an old-school fuddy-duddy. In fact, quite the opposite. I believe that email, texting, and social media can all be valuable communication tools. But they DO NOT compensate for the real-time value of face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) interactions with customers.

Here’s a simple truth that will nevergo out of vogue. Every customer on your target list of accounts shares their needs, wants, goals, objectives, thoughts, feelings, and concerns with someone. The question is whether they’re open and willing to share that information with you.

Throughout the six books I’ve published on selling and effective communication skills, I consistently make the point that business relationships are  personal, and people ultimately buy from people. While that may seem cliché, a communication gap is created when today’s electronic and social medial mentality impedes the ability to cultivate viable and lasting business relationships.

The fear of rejection has always been the enemy for salespeople who are responsible for reaching out to prospective buyers. And now that the average response rate when leaving voice-mail messages or sending mass email is less than 1%, it’s much less taxing on the human psyche to hide behind a keyboard than to actually put yourself out there and risk being rejected.

I get that, too! I was never good at dealing with rejection, even though multiple sales managers over the years tried to pound the idea into my head that rejection comes with the territory, so deal with it.

It may sound weird, but I’ve found that the best way to deal with rejection is to win more often. Closing an important sale, or wrapping up a significant deal is an aphrodisiac that is unmatched in other professions. While you can’t expect to win ‘em all, there’s no reason you shouldn’t expect to win more than your fair share of opportunities in today’s selling environment.

I would argue that the proliferation of electronic communication tools, social media, and digital marketing have created significant opportunities for go-getters in sales to take advantage of the proficiency gap that I described earlier—to engage more prospects in more productive sales conversations.

But, you cannot simply revert to what may have been ‘business as usual’ back in the day. To truly separate yourself from the rest of the ‘noise’ in the marketplace, you have to be more purposeful, relevant, credible, and valuable than ever. That brings us to the multi-million dollar question. In today’s selling environment, how (exactly) can I (or my sales team) sustain a competitive advantage?

It is absolutely possible to get a 50%+ call back rate when leaving voice-mail messages, or 70%+ when engaging new prospects with email. But, it’s not going to happen using traditional cold calling scripts, or by being complacent with the notion that sales is a numbers game…so make more calls!

For too long, the importance of strategy and technique has been overlooked in managing, coaching, and when training sales teams. Just look around any sales organization and you will see that some sellers are significantly more effective than others, even when they’re selling the same products and services to the same types of customers.

What’s the difference maker? Personality? Luck? While there may always be an element of being in the right place at the right time, the common thread that top performers share is an ongoing commitment to continually honing their craft and developing their selling skills.

Yes, the selling environment has evolved and will continue to change. But people still buy from people. In fact, I’ve the point in my pilgrimage as a sales trainer that when a budding salesperson tries to explain to me that customers no longer want to talk to salespeople, I simply laugh. If they’re not talking with you, then I can guarantee they’re talking with one of your competitors. Everyone is sharing with someone.

The real question is, what are you doing to be proactive in your approach so that potential buyers will “want to” share their goals and objectives with you?

Who is the decision maker?
What are the customer’s primary business drivers?
How much is the deal worth?
What’s their timeframe for making a decision?
What are the next steps?
Is there any way to close the business sooner?

These, along with any number of other similar tracking questions, are staples of sales forecast reviews that are transpiring within sales organizations at companies all over the world. Proactively coaching your sales teams, however, requires more than just tracking deals on the forecast.

Personally, I am a huge proponent of qualification, in order to know how best to allocate resources toward those opportunities that present the greatest potential. But there is a catch. These qualifying questions simply identify the status of each deal, which does nothing to make the salesperson or sales team more effective in terms of the opportunity itself or developing their skills down the road. In fact, tracking questions serve no purpose other than gathering information.

On the other hand, proactive sales questions (asked strategically) enable sales teams to accomplish much more than simply gathering information. For example, strategic questions are one of your best vehicles for establishing credibility and piquing the customer’s interest. Strategic questions are also one of the best ways to convey value, forge relationships, develop internal champions, create referrals, and secure smaller commitments on the way to consummating the larger sale.

The desire to track deals on the forecast is a given in sales. But, shouldn’t there be a similar desire to increase the effectiveness of the sales team? That’s why I advocate the addition of a series of ‘forward-thinking’ strategic sales questions that promote thought leadership and are designed to help sales teams develop and execute more effectively moving forward.

Some of the more thought provoking questions I teach include:

Q: How many reasons does the customer have to buy from you?
Q: Is there anything we can do to increase the customer’s sense of urgency for making a decision?
Q: What can we do to get deeper, wider, and more strategic within the account?
Q: How can we position our solutions as the most cost-effective alternative?
Q: What business issues, decision factors, or ideas are you prepared to raise in your calls that customers may not think to bring up on their own?
Q: How are you differentiating yourself from competitors who are targeting your same list of prospect accounts?
Q: How can we help our internal champions secure the approvals necessary to move forward with a decision when we’re not onsite or in the meeting?
Q: Is there anything we can do to be more effective on future customer calls?

When coaching individuals or entire sales teams, my favorite question is one of the simplest: “What business issues, decision factors, or ideas are you prepared to raise in your calls that customers may not think to bring up on their own?”

If you have read any of my books or experienced one of my training classes, then you know that I am NOT a fan of the old-school mentality of “uncovering needs.” Truth be told, customers aren’t always clear as to what they need, in which case, you’re not going to find out by barraging them with probing questions. Even when the customer knows exactly what they need, potential buyers are often reticent to share their needs with a salesperson they don’t yet know or trust.

That’s why I preach Needs Development—the skill of proactively raising business issues or decision factors that otherwise wouldn’t have come up.

To prove the point that customers aren’t prone to fully articulating their needs, try this experiment. Simply ask one of your friends or coworkers why they own a cell phone (just as an example). Some will say it allows them to communicate. Others might mention that it gives them access to email or provides a sense of security. I don’t doubt those benefits for a minute. But, that’s NOT why people buy or own cell phones!

Ask them if they also use their cell phone to take pictures or videos. Does it give them greater mobility, enabling them to be in closer touch with their customers? Do they use it to manage their calendar, or to listen to music while on the go, or to play video games during periods of downtime? Does their phone also serve as a contact manager, hand-held calculator, flashlight, timepiece, alarm clock, and weather forecaster, in addition to providing directions, traffic alerts, and GPS coordinates to their favorite restaurant?

Most cell phone users leverage technology to address a wide variety of needs. But when asked, “What do you look for in a cell phone?,” the vast majority of potential buyers will mention only some fraction of the aforementioned capabilities. So, who’s going to bring up the rest? If not you, then you leave the door wide open for one of your competitors to be seen as a more valuable resource.

Hence my question: “What ideas, business issues, or decision factors are you prepared to raise that the customer may not think to bring up on their own?”

Trying to uncover a customer’s pain points is a mistake that’s not only costing companies a ton of money in terms of lost revenue and missed opportunities, it continues to be promoted amongst sales teams all over the world.

“Easing a customer’s pain” may seem like a nice gesture, but the notion of probing for pain (only) contains two illogical flaws in today’s selling environment. First, focusing on prospects who are currently experiencing pain significantly reduces the size and scope of your target audience. While everyone agrees that people who are ‘in pain’ are indeed motivated to find solutions, it turns out that decision makers and influencers are just as motivated to purchase products and services because of many other factors.

Technology titan Apple, for example, has sold over a billion (with a “B”) iPhones since 2007, and they generated $9+ billion in iPod revenue before that. How many iPods and iPhones do you think were purchased because the customer was in some sort of pain? 

It turns out that customers purchases products and services based on a wide range of decision factors. Whether you sell technology solutions, manufactured goods, employee benefit packages, or healthcare services, the decision to acquire your product or service may be driven by something as simple as the desire to achieve a goal or satisfy specific business objectives. Potential buyers can just as easily be motivated by wants, needs, or an opportunity to improve their existing condition.

So, why would you want to limit the size of your audience to only focus on customers who are currently experiencing pain, when the larger opportunity includes prospective buyers who are just as driven to acquire solutions to address any number of other wants, needs, goals, objectives, and desires?

In addition to limiting the size of your target market, the second flaw with the strategy of uncovering the customer’s pain points is that it can come across as highly offensive to the people you are so desperately hoping to influence. If you call on customers who are either territorial or proud of the work they do, good luck bonding with them by trying to expose their flaws, faults, and deficiencies.

Case in point, if you call on a Network Manager and ask: “So, what problems do you have managing your data?” Predictably, their knee-jerk reaction will likely be to say, “We’re doing just fine, thank you (click).”

Even if you mean well, probing for pain is a high-risk strategy. Trying to expose a customer’s weaknesses, or shining a light on their oversights, is one of the quickest ways to put people on the defensive. If you really want to get under the customer’s skin, try firing off a series of pain-oriented questions like: “So, what mistakes have you made?” “What decisions do you regret?” Heck, you might as well ask them, “How ‘come you’re still employed here?”

Fortunately, there’s a proven antidote to this old-school practice of attacking the customer’s ego. All you have to do is reverse the premise of your questions. Instead of ‘chipping away’ at the customer’s pride by trying to indict the status quo, or contunually exploring what’s wrong, a more thoughtful salesperson could just as easily ask (an IT Manager, for example), “How important is securing the data on your company’s network?” When talking with an HR Director, you could ask, “Would you be interested in a cost-effective way to expand your company’s employee benefits package?” A better way to explore a Facilities Manager’s needs in a manufacturing plant might be to ask, “Would you be open to a couple ideas on how to improve your plant’s overall operational efficiency?”

Before you start dialing the phone, or begin crafting a bunch of clever one-liners to take out into the field, it’s important to recognize that an effective needs development strategy requires more than a single ‘magic’ question. That’s why I’ve written multiple books on the subject.

For our purposes here, I’m merely pointing out that “probing for pain points” is one of the most common mistakes sales teams make. On the other hand, salespeople who focus on helping their customers satisfy a broader range of goals, wants, needs, and objectives can significantly increase their own sales results.

Here’s the best part. Exploring decision drivers that extend far beyond just uncovering “pain points” is actionable on your very next customer call—that is, if you are open to a couple ideas.