Episode 254: Lisa Scotto – Mastering Sales Success: The Art of Power Questions in Client Conversations

Intro  00:00

Welcome to the Making Sales Social Podcast featuring the Top Voices in Sales, Marketing, and Business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show! 

Bob Woods 00:00:05.730 –> 00:00:19.460

Lisa Scotto, the founder of LMS Group Coaching a sales strategy and business development. Consulting firm joins us today in the Social Sales Link Virtual Studios for this Episode of Making Sales Social. Lisa’s company focuses on creating end to end. B2B sales strategy making her a perfect fit for our show specifics of what Lisa does include pipeline development, presentation, blueprints, prints, and refining what your company already has, going for it to help it build revenue. All great goals to have. 

We’re also going to be talking a lot about power questions, which I mean, you know, I’m the one who usually asks questions here, but I always enjoy hearing about power questions, especially when it comes to sales. And we’re going to be getting a lot into that. We’re also going to touch a little bit on her approach of sales being a discipline, and that good salespeople just don’t sell. They add value. That’s something we emphasize here on Making Sales Social and at Social Sales Link. So I’m definitely looking forward to that and hope you are, too. So with that Lisa, Welcome to Making Sales Social.

Lisa Scotto 00:01:13.960 –> 00:01:16.860

Thank you. Thank you so much, Bob. Happy to be here.

Bob Woods 00:01:16.990 –> 00:01:26.769

Good always, always, always happy to hear that. So our first traditional question is, What does making sales social mean to you?

Lisa Scotto 00:01:27.580 –> 00:01:45.920

I love that question for so many reasons, because I think it really is about creating relationships with your potential clients and prospects, and often I think that is missed with salespeople. They just want to get right into the sale. right? Like, let me tell them everything I know about my product or service. And I think really social selling for me is, how do you become friends? 

How do you build a relationship with your potential prospects? And I do think power questions help that process. I think, of course, asking questions of anyone creates a relationship and creates that more of a social connection. So I’m a firm believer in relationship, based selling and figuring out how to bring that to whatever it is that you are selling in the marketplace.

Bob Woods 00:02:16.910 –> 00:02:39.130

Yeah, that’s just that’s that’s that’s absolutely perfect. Yeah. Sales. I mean, once, part of time, sales were transactional or transactional long, long, long, long time ago. And, thank God, it’s not anymore, because it’s really, I mean, quite frankly, it’s it’s actually fun, believe it, or not to get to know other people out there who are, who are, who may be doing different things, and you know, helping them out through the products and services that we sell.

Lisa Scotto 00:02:39.840 –> 00:03:00.019

Right. And I think really, if you’re adding value to the conversation or to the relationship, then it becomes not salesy. It becomes, how am I adding value right? And I think that should be the question any salesperson should be asking before they’re even reaching out to any prospects is, how can I add value to this specific conversation, to this specific prospect, to this specific client.

And I think the best salespeople sometimes walk away from sales right, which is so intuitive. But if you’re truly sort of grounded in how I’m adding value, which is something I’ve sort of been my north star from a sales perspective, then. I feel like that really sheds light on. Well, in some situations you may not be adding value. And you may have to walk away from that. 

Bob Woods 00:03:29.450 –> 00:03:35.460

So yeah, yeah, because there are situations where it’s kind of like it’s a difference between being of service, but trying to jam things in at the same time, and then, being of true service, which is what you mentioned, which is like sometimes, you know. Hey, this thing, this ain’t it for us, you know. But do you know someone who can, you know, who might be able to to use my product or or service, or whatever I think that’s great.

Lisa Scotto 00:03:56.020 –> 00:04:04.780

Yeah. I think, too, as I’ve learned, being a consultant now, you don’t necessarily always have this opportunity for selling a product.But I like to give a lot away for free right? How can I add value even in that first initial conversation? What are the top? 3 things that my potential prospects might leave the conversation with. Maybe you might want to gate at some point. But as part of building that relationship you sort of are giving in the hopes that that will come back to at some point.

And I think that’s also a great skill to cultivate as a salesperson . How are you even with each interaction giving away something, whether it’s knowledge, a contact, a relationship, an article that you thought of for the client. Right? How are you continuing to foster that versus just reaching out and asking for something? Right? So I think it does have to be sort of this giving state not to come off as too salesy or or too pushy. 

Bob Woods 00:05:02.570 –> 00:05:26.009

Right, yeah, definitely gets one of my favorite quotes, which is a, you know. Stop talking about how you help people and just help people. I love that. That’s great. Yeah. Yeah, so I really like a quote that’s predominantly featured at your website. It’s a quote by Blair Singer. And the quote is that “The person who asks the questions is always the one who is in control of the situation powerful.” 

And it’s true which gets us into the concept of power questions. So what the heck are power questions. Great question, Bob. Thanks for asking questions of your prospects. So as part of the sales process. Any good salesperson knows that they should be asking their client lots of questions.

Lisa Scotto 00:05:55.310 –> 00:06:23.750

When I think of power questions, it’s actually tweaking how we’re asking them, so that we’re extracting a lot of information from the prospect or the client, and I think often in this sort of you got the meeting, you set up a meeting with a client. You’re on the phone. And you really just want to import all of your knowledge taking back and and really thinking about. Actually, I’m going to speak less and ask more. In fact, I would tell my teams when I was in corporate. 

You know the majority of the call should be them speaking, not you speaking, and if it’s in reverse, and you’re speaking for the majority of the call, that is not a good sales call. And you really should think about how to reverse that. So a power question for me is always something that I prepped before a prospect call. So I’m doing a ton of research as any good salesperson should be doing ahead of a phone call. And you should be doing research, not just on the company or the person, but also the industry at large as well as just macroeconomic trends, right? 

Like anything that might be important to that conversation. And I typically craft about 3 or 4 questions ahead of that call. Even now in the middle of the call, you might sort of be inspired, or that the the client or prospect might say something where you need to tweak, or you need to sort of riff, maybe a question that you’ve come up with, but really thinking about not just the questions, but how you’re asking them in that conversation is important, and as I coach and and consult with various different companies, often they they intuitively know right they should be asking questions. 

But they’re not sort of honing in on things like, “Tell me more about that,” or “How did you do that?” or “How did that marketing campaign work for you?” “How did it perform?” Right? They’re asking. “Oh, I saw that marketing campaign. Did it go well?” which is a yes or no question. Right? That’s a very black and white answer. Instead of telling me how it performs. Well, that’s gonna open up a lot more of a conversation, especially if you’re let’s say an advertising agency right? And you’re trying to get that marketers business. So really, power questions are how you ask questions and ensure that you’re prepared with those questions ahead of any sort of prospect or client phone call.

Bob Woods 00:08:13.180 –> 00:08:18.510

Yeah, that’s yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s something that’s and that’s really powerful, too. So how can they be effective? Not only in just B2B sales, but because we love talking about social selling here? You know, when it comes to social selling, I mean hopefully. Hopefully, when it comes to how we do social selling which is like education prior to them, even contacting you through mainly Linkedin. 

Hopefully, they have some idea of what it is we do. And hopefully, we’ve been able to speak to them through the information that we’ve already provided. I guess loop power questions in at that point, so that a salesperson who does social selling kind of takes things to the next level while being a value, and while helping.

Lisa Scotto 00:09:02.820 –> 00:09:27.629

Well, I think it’s important, even from a social standpoint for outreach, there could be questions peppered in there that really get the attention of a potential right? So instead of just crafting an email. That’s sort of a verbatim of what you’re trying to do or what you’re trying to think. You can pepper in questions in a power question format that maybe might intrigue someone, or maybe might even get them willing, willing to take that first step with the right, willing to take that first phone call or meeting with you.

So I think you could even back it up a bit and have it be a part of that sort of discipline of reaching out to people. I often pepper my outreach with those types of questions to try and elicit a response. Right? I think we all have to get very creative, especially when you’re reaching out through Linkedin, or if you’re doing it completely cold, and I think doing your research and asking those questions really will set you apart from the emails that are just what I like to call, you know, just somebody throwing up other clients. Right? 

Bob Woods 00:10:10.750 –> 00:10:14.649

Right. Yeah. You. And mentioned something that  I’d like to get into a little bit more power question, framing or formatting, or or whatever. I guess this is probably a good time to talk a little bit about specific power questions, and maybe an example or 2 of what exactly a power question is and why It’s phrased like that to get the type of responses that you want to and showing value and things like that at the same time.

Lisa Scotto 00:10:32.540 –> 00:11:05.769

Yeah, so early in my career I’ve been selling for more years than I’d like to say over 25 years, and early in my career I learned about this concept of power questions and selling, and really tried to figure out how to put it into practice. And I had a client back in the day where I actually went and made physical sales calls. So this is going way back. And the client was unhappy with it. So they were already a client. 

They were unhappy with a policy change that the company I worked for, and every time I made a sales call would bring up this policy change, and would, like, you know, really beat me down around the policy change that I had no control over. Right? So I remember thinking to myself, I’ve got to come up with a power question. I can ask this person so that they kind of get off my back with this new policy change. So next time I went and I was prepared, I went in, and I said how many clients, because they were selling on behalf of my organization. 

How many clients have you lost because of the new policy change? So, many clients, because of the new policy change? In fact, I went on to be the highest grossing salesperson that year for that specific product for the Walt Disney Company. And it really wasn’t until I framed the question in that way that he also realized, actually, I’m making this a problem. It’s not a problem right like this is not a problem. So that’s like a good ex, an example of it in an account. Executive sort of way, right? An account. I was maintaining a relationship with this client, I think, in a prospecting meeting. 

What’s important is you’re trying to get the prospect to tell the story to you, because then what they’re at, what you’ve asked them, then helps you formulate your story back right? It helps you. Sort of craft. Why your product or service is a good fit for them so often. What I will ask clients is, tell me more about your process. So tell me, it is good. you know, is a good statement to use. It’s actually not a question which is funny. Tell me more, right getting them to talk about anything you can ask that of anything, no matter what your product or services using, how and why? Questions right? How did that perform, as I mentioned earlier. 

Or how do you view the organization now versus a year from now, right? Or why did something work versus? Why did something not work? Why did you get on the phone right? That’s good. A ton of information, right? So I think those 3 sort of tell me more why and how are really good easy ones to start with, right? And then you can. From there. We’re fine. I think the other thing that’s interesting with power questions is inevitable. You have to practice right. This is just like working out right? You. You have to build up a tolerance, to be comfortable with the silence. 

You have to build up a tolerance, to be open to this conversation right to be a bilateral conversation with a client, and sometimes people are nervous about that. So you have to practice it right? And I think that’s also very important. And one of my clients said, Well, I don’t feel comfortable asking the questions, and I said, Well, that’s part of this. You have to start to feel comfortable, flexing that muscle right? And in order to do that you have to ask the questions right? So I think it all sort of feeds into each other in the end.

Bob Woods 00:14:13.700 –> 00:14:18.040

So that actually brings up an interesting question. When  someone who is in the power question frame of mind for lack of a better way to put it. Start off. Let’s just say an initial sales call, are they? Are they warning people? Are they prepping the people who they’re talking to? They’re gonna be asking a lot of questions and maybe helping. Helping the people that they’re talking to, maybe get into the right frame of mind of things, or are they just charging forward and just and just going, you know, full bear with it.

Lisa Scotto 00:14:37.400 –> 00:15:07.180

No, I always recommend to put an agenda together when you are letting everyone on the call, and when I say, “Put an agenda in your head.” Have your agenda, or have it as part of the meeting invitation, where you will let them know like first, you know section one or first up would love to ask some questions about your business and your experience thus far, you know. Second second section is, I’ll share our products or service, and talk about how it might help benefit you. Right? And third is, you know, the follow up and next steps right? 

So I do always recommend that you’re putting those agendas together, and you’re sort of alerting them. And also you. You need to be a bit. You need to be open and receptive to that conversation, so I always sort of coach folks and say like “You may get on the call,” And it may be. they don’t wanna have a conversation right like you’re it’s a I call it the wet noodle syndrome, right? Like it’s like pulling teeth they’re giving you. You’re asking these great questions and they’re giving you yes or no answers. Right? You know. That is an opportunity to say, maybe this isn’t a great time for this conversation. It sounds like, maybe we’re not a right fit right? Going back to the adding value. 

You know you do have some control as a salesperson. You are not just, you know. don’t have to be a sheep right? As part of that. Like. You can assert some control over that relationship. And III does suggest you do that. And I also think it is you. You need to be open if the conversation goes in a different path, like, even though you set up 3 h questions like, if they don’t relate anymore. Like, don’t ask those questions right. You have to where your clients going, but I think it the act of doing it, and the act of preparing for it helps you, because, just like, if you’re preparing for a test, or a quiz, or something like that, the more you do it and the more you’re practicing it the better. 

You’re going to be right. So it’s just a matter of again going back to the discipline part of sales that should be part of your discipline as you’re doing the research, it should spur questions and interest for insights that you want to dive deeper into. You say, “Hey, I saw your website, tell me more about that.” And then, when it’s your turn to sort of maybe share more about your service or or product, you could say. And I, you know, based on our conversation. It sounds like this would help you accomplish. X, which we just spoke about right, which you just shared with me is your goal for the company a year from now? Right? So it helps you sort of make those dots and connect those dots for the client, so they don’t have to do it, because the other thing that I learned working for the Walt Disney Company, as you can imagine, which is where I spent the majority of my career is, everything is with the focus of the client or the guests. Right? 

Which is why questions are so important? Because if somebody asked you after vacation, “How was your vacation?” Essentially, it’s a snoozer question, right? You’re like it was good, right? And then like, off you go right if somebody asked you “What was the best thing you ate on your vacation, Bob.” yeah, see? A different bomb. right? I’m really curious about what you eat on your vacation, or what the best experience was on your vacation, or what your family likes best on the vacation. Right? It creates this sort of wait a minute, or Lisa really wants to know about that. That’s so interesting because I love to talk. You know me, Bob. 

I love to talk about what I eat on vacation, right? So think about how you would feel as if you think you’re getting on a sales call. And you think you’re just gonna be listening to regurgitated sales versus wow! Somebody just got on sales. Call that I’ve never met and asked me some really great questions and got me thinking even more than I was before, right?  

Bob Woods 00:19:06.610 –> 00:19:09.960

Especially getting back to the quote that I just had. This really is about changing the dynamics of relationships between the salesperson and the prospect, or the salesperson and the client. If it’s more of a type of situation, I mean, it sounds to me. It’s like a way to take control. But I mean not truly take control, because you’re still wanting to potentially sell something. And you can’t control who ultimately signs the contract and signs the checks and things like that. But let’s get into the value, adding a little bit more, because I think that once you’ve got control, it’s probably easier to add value. Is that a statement that you’d agree with?

Lisa Scotto 00:19:35.380 –> 00:19:49.120

Definitely. I mean, I think once you’ve sort of ascertained, and have all that information, all that great information about your prospect or client, you then can add value in ways that maybe you didn’t even know you could. Right? So let’s say, that person is like, actually, we’re hiring someone on our team for a marketing position. I’m making it up right. I’m sure you, as a salesperson, are a ton of marketers, right? So could you add value there? Right. I think the act of asking a question gives you more fodder to be able to add value at different points in that relationship, and you will never know that unless you ask the questions right, you would never know. And you would never connect those dots until you’ve had that really robust conversation with the client.

Bob Woods 00:20:20.370 –> 00:20:38.920

Yeah, definitely, definitely. So we’ve been mainly talking about power questions in terms of prospecting. You’ve already addressed a little bit about someone who is in an account exec, or someone who already has a book of business. You know, can can expand. But how can someone who is who’s not trying to not solve a problem, but to try to quash the thought of a problem like you’re doing in in the example that that you gave before, and just wants to expand a book of business within their current within their current book. Already, how can power questions help with that?

Lisa Scotto 00:21:01.620 –> 00:21:21.540

So I think power questions can help. It really can help any salesperson or not. But for managers, ae, things like that really formulating power questions to really understand where your current client is sort of in your process, or where your current client might be able to expand the business right? Really thing and figuring out, okay, how? What can I ask my client to better understand where we stand as a firm where we, you know where our services stand, or ask the client a question around? Maybe additional business that we can get from them. So I think that’s where sort of an ae can shine if you’re not just servicing the client for today. You’re figuring out how your firm or your services or your products can help the client in the future. In order to do that, you need to have a dialogue, and you need to ask some really pointed questions specifically, power questions to better ask your team so that you can then provide that value moving forward. You know. Oftentimes you’ll be an ae or an account manager. And then, all of a sudden, the business goes away, and you know there was nothing specific like that went wrong. But you didn’t sort of or you may not have headed off a problem that you didn’t know was there because you weren’t asking the right questions. Right? So I think it is important, especially if your role requires you to grow or expand land and expand within a company, or if your goal is to retain that quarterly quarterly meetings with your client, or once a month right? Whatever your cadences include some of those really interesting power questions, and ensuring from an industry standpoint that you’re capturing some of that industry. Intel. Right? Look what’s going on in the world right now with AI right like I mean things. So peppering your sort of regular cadence meetings with those power questions, I think, could be, really, game changing for an ae or an account manager.

Bob Woods 00:23:03.890 –> 00:23:10.280

Okay? So here’s a question that I had not even thought to ask until you brought it up. So it’s your fault blaming it on you. We do talk a lot about AI, And I’m not sure if you’re using AI at all in terms of power question, are you using AI? And if so, how are you using it?

Lisa Scotto 00:23:12.530 –> 00:23:15.860

It’s a great question. What’s interesting about AI is the prompts that you use need to be power questions. So if I’m prompting a Chat GPT or Bard. I’m often prompted with a power question to try and sort of on earth and feel back the onion to a problem or a question that I’m asking. So I think that’s how I use power questions as it relates to AI. I’m not a I haven’t really asked Chat GPT to create any power questions for me. But I am using it, maybe to preemptively think about what a client might answer, right or an industry problem might sort of be. 

So. I do think it’s important. And I do think AI is an extremely important tool, as salespeople go forward, because again, I firmly believe that in order to build relationships you have to be relatable, and you have to do your research. And I think Chat GPT and likes really provide an amazing layer of research that you know, you know, Google, or just the Internet has not has not proven to be, I think the other way I’ve used AI, which is unrelated to power questions is, I will craft emails or I will craft communications with clients.

And I will put it into Chat GPT just to say words like this, or, you know, make this sound better. Use this tone for it, and I do think you know as salespeople. And I think typical salespeople, you need to use all the resources available to you, right? So like, right? I don’t think it’s gonna take a salesperson job specifically. Again, if you’re relying on relationships, there’s no way that that at least right now, right?  

Bob Woods 00:25:22.140 –> 00:25:50.860

And let’s not think about the future when it comes to that type of thing. But you’d I’m dying to know. because I can definitely see about using power questions and prompts, and and and how much more powerful the output could be. And I think I’m actually kind of doing that without really knowing that I was doing that. But can you give an example of the power of a power question prompt? How does that sound? You can even trademark that phrase if you want.

Lisa Scotto 00:25:50.860 –> 00:26:13.600

Power question. that’s a good one, I would say it would include again, tell me more about X, or give me a comparison between X and Y. So you know, giving the tool that sort of reference point of your trying to compare 2 things, or you’re trying to understand something more deeply. So I think about the comparison. I have used that one, and that is very interesting, and I think that could be related to comparing my product to some other product, or it could even be somehow related in the industry. Like, compare the culture of X Company versus Y company, or something like that. So those would be my 2 to tell me more. And the comparison prompts have worked very well for me.

Bob Woods 00:26:38.570 –> 00:26:39.310

Okay. Alright, good. So I think we’re gonna. Oh, God! Mine, Just get mine. Get very specific. I’ve actually got a prompt model that’s called Crisp, which is, you know, content and I’ve gotta read off of it just because I do it so intuitively. Now people ask me what Crisp stands for, and I’m like God, I gotta think about content, role, inspiration, scope and prohibitions. I try to work all of those as much as possible and into prompts to really get something out of it like the first time, the first time. Either that or I may use like a couple of those letters at first fully planning on, you know, planning on asking additional ones a little later on down the road, and I think that probably the most powerful one out of that entire Crisp kind of format is prohibitions to tell it. What? Not to do. 

Lisa Scotto 00:27:35.350 –> 00:27:37.630

Yeah. That’s great.

Bob Woods 00:27:38.350 –> 00:27:40.630

Yeah. But I love Chat GPT. I could. If someone said, “Here’s 100,000 plan  Chat GPT,” I would be the happiest person in the universe. Yeah, okay, sounds good. Let’s do that. So that’s getting to some more general questions about B2B sales. So first of all, talking about biz, dev play books. What are the key elements and successful ones for sales and biz dev. And how should teams go about creating one?

Lisa Scotto 00:28:11.540 –> 00:28:33.489

So I think the very most important key to successful play books is that they have to be easy to read, easy to follow and easy to sort of execute. I think I’ve come across a lot of play books where it is just almost too detailed, right? And you lose people very quickly, and my sort of rule of thumb on that is, if the average person is not gonna be able to follow along, then, you know you shouldn’t. 

You shouldn’t be using it. You should really make it easy to follow along and use and ensure that it keeps people’s attention. I think oftentimes people think more is better, and I firmly believe that is not true. Necessarily, right? Because if nobody reads it through the end, or nobody gets through it, or nobody follows it, then guess what it’s not, it’s not worth it to be. So. That’s typically my rule of thumb, yeah. 

Bob Woods 00:29:34.070 –> 00:29:37.209

Yeah, it’s really interesting, because it it kind of comes down to one of my kind of gold golden rules, which is just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do something and a a and I think that definitely applies in terms of what you’re talking about, you know, like sometimes they can go into too much depth and have too much breath and you know, just not focus in on exactly what it is you’re trying to do, which is sales and biz dev.

Lisa Scotto 00:29:38.040 –> 00:29:49.239

And I think, too, what happens then is, everyone’s focused on the process. And it’s like, well, we’re not doing the things we need to do right to get more meetings right, which is really, ultimately what we should be doing. So you know, I think it’s important. And oftentimes companies want to be so process driven nowadays because of technology, because they have reports, and because of, you know, all that stuff. Yes, definitely use it to make your lives easier and better. But the second, it’s not making your lives easier than we should. We should reevaluate because the real goal is, you should be trying to have as many conversations as possible and that ultimately should be every salesperson’s sort of goal.

Bob Woods 00:30:17.870 –> 00:30:39.979

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So next, let’s get into sales presentations a little bit. I’ve seen, unfortunately, more of my fair share that just suck. I mean, they’re bad. You develop presentation blueprints. So how can salespeople and sales orgs transform their presentations from ones that suck to ones that shine?

Lisa Scotto 00:30:40.710 –> 00:31:04.810

Great question. I think it goes back to research. I talk a lot about researching before you ask your questions, researching before you get on the phone, you should be researching even before you give a sales presentation. And here’s why you want to be able to leave throughout your presentation, either information to the client that you’ve gleaned as research information the client has shared with you as part of your questions, right? As part of your questions. Maybe something happened today. That’s important for the meeting, right? 

You can’t just use yesterday’s presentation if something landed today in the news that’s important to the conversation. So I think, doing that research and really customizing the deck or the presentation to the client is important from a content standpoint. I also think being a Disney alum storytelling is really important, right? Like nobody wants to sit there and listen to drone on about whatever it is you’re selling. You need to make it a motive, and you need to make it exciting and tell a story. Right? And the story could be personal. 

It could be about the industry, but you need to weave that into it, and I think junior salespeople again. They get nervous. So I always recommend practicing right like you have to practice. Don’t just roll up to the meeting, doing no research, never practicing your deck, never checking it right and thinking it’s gonna go. Amazing cause. Guess what? It’s not gonna go amazing. It’s gonna go poorly, right? So what does that mean? It means you need to get a buddy. I mean, I used to sort of pair my sales people together. Practice the story, practice what you’re going to say, practice the research.

And that goes back to your question earlier about the discipline. Right? Sales is the discipline in the sense that you need to do all those things all the time. And you can’t just think I’m gonna wing this and see how it goes. Right? Cause that could be. You know, you could be losing a great opportunity at that moment. So the discipline of sales, I think, is often what is the hardest. right? It’s not hard to get on the phone and be jovial and have a conversation with something that’s not the hard part. The hard part is getting to that point and making sure. When you get on that call, you’re really prepared right? And you’re ready to add value.

Bob Woods 00:32:55.540 –> 00:32:58.599

So then you’re also ready to listen. Which lot of times people just have their agenda, you know their agendas, and they’re not, I mean, because I’ve been on calls where, quite frankly, II probably missed some nuggets because I was probably thinking of a little far ahead, and just and and not truly being present and and being present is is really key, I think.

Lisa Scotto 00:33:19.260 –> 00:33:27.269

Totally. But I think that’s a function of people being nervous, and they don’t like silence as a society to not if it’s silent, that’s for I don’t know why. But we think that that’s bad when actually, that’s when things can sort of blossom right like, if you just stop talking, which is also hard for sales people, we tend to be extroverts and generalizing right? 

But, like you, you know, if you have that moment of silence where the client has been, add something, or there’s more to that story. Then that’s sort of the beauty of that relationship. I think if you’re if you haven’t done it before, or you haven’t sort of practice that that can be. You know, you feel like it’s an eternity. Right? You feel like that. That pause is a pregnant pause. And it’s an eternity.

Bob Woods 00:34:09.870 –> 00:34:13.309

Right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And whenever I hear about uncomfortable pauses and uncomfortable silences, I always go back to that scene in pulp fiction, if you know, you know. And there is truth in that scene, too. I mean, it’s like, it’s actually really true. What you know, you know about uncomfortable sciences, silences, and then, and then adding, what? What you added, I think is great.

Lisa Scotto 00:34:33.949 –> 00:34:35.620

Yeah, totally.

Bob Woods 00:34:35.810 –> 00:34:58.509

So. I always like to loop in my marketing peep into these conversations. So what advice would you give marketing teams who support salespeople to ensure cohesive and effective approaches to B2B sales and also, quite frankly, I think, to support them with power questions, cause I could see where marketing can really help people with developing power questions, too.

Lisa Scotto 00:34:58.630 –> 00:35:17.910

Well, I love my marketing, my marketing friends, and I think marketers should have their set of power questions that they should be asking the sales team. The marketers should be coming to the table with their sales team, really trying to dig, and again feel back that onion, to understand what the objections are right, what is, what is the either the block that a salesperson is having? 

Or what information is the salesperson getting from a prospect or client that could help inform the marketer. So I think you know, each sort of department of a company can have their own set of power questions. It’s really not just for salespeople and that will again unlock. I think some of the things that marketers would need to help them do their jobs better, and to really help support the sales team.

Bob Woods 00:35:53.310 –> 00:36:04.530

Realizing that there’s all different types of types of industries and everything else out there. What’s a good example of a powerful question that marketers can ask salespeople?

Lisa Scotto 00:36:04.530 –> 00:36:23.860

Well, you could ask about your sales. Team. You know what the top 3 objections that we’re getting with regards when we’re on when we’re on the phone with a client. Right? Those objections are exactly what a marketer should be using right to kind of flip them on their head to get more leads, or to get more attraction.

Bob Woods 00:36:24.080 –> 00:36:41.419

And develop content, too, from a social selling standpoint. I mean, that’s actually one of the things that we recommend is, you know, your top objections. Turn that around and make it into content into an ebook and put it on a post. And you know, just explode with that. Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa Scotto 00:36:41.530 –> 00:36:46.050

But a lot of times marketers don’t think of that as a relationship, that they should be sort of probing and asking questions, they think that. “Oh, well, my job is to figure that out right.” Well, “No, your job is to collaborate with the sales team,” and if they have the answer like, “Why not,” you know? Use that like you said, “Exploit.” Exploit your objections to your favor, Right?

Bob Woods 00:37:05.650 –> 00:37:14.029

Right. One who could not agree with that more, 100%. So before we wrapped up, we were talking a little bit. Before the show about. but a subject that’s not popular. But we definitely need to address it. So the Post Covid world. So things have changed. I mean, you know, we’re we’re we’re not meeting as much as we were before you and me are on zoom right now. A lot of questions are, Yeah, I’m a lot of meetings, rather than being on zoom. What are your top sales tips post-covid?

Lisa Scotto 00:37:40.320 –> 00:37:50.029

So my first one. It sounds similar to one that maybe was Pre-Covid. But it’s ABC, and it’s not always closing. It’s always curious. I think, with Covid. You know. Obviously, you’re not building relationships in person. However, going back to research, I think research stems with curiosity. So I am sort of an avid lover of all things, not just in my industry, not just in my clients’ industry. I’m like an Avid. I’m curious about a lot of things, and that helps you be sort of a student of the world, right? 

And when you’re on a call with someone that allows you to have the vocabulary that you need to be able to form a relationship quickly. So always be curious. I think that is even more important. Now, Post-Covid because you have a very small amount of time to create a bond with someone right? And where you made it was a conference before, and you have 3 nights, and dinners and drinks and fun stuff you have, you know, 3 min at the beginning of the zoom to really sort of form that bond. 

So, being curious, allows you to sort of be comfortable with all different types of situations, right? And all different types of conversations. So that’s number one. The second one is related if you can’t research enough. I used to tell my teams to be like a defense lawyer. You’re going to research things right? That’s that. So you almost know the answers to the questions before we ask them. If I was ever on a sales call, and someone would ask me a question that you could easily find on my website, right? 

Bob Woods 00:39:24.490 –> 00:39:25.260

For your LinkedIn profile, Right.

Lisa Scotto 00:39:26.490 –> 00:39:44.260

For right? Like, okay, here, right if I’m just gonna answer a question that you can find on my Linkedin profile. I could use this survey when it’s for, you know, a much more successful or solution based event. So I think you know that is also very important. And you know, we’re very focused on our phones right now, and the quick fix, and like doing things quickly where I think, slowing down and really taking your time around, crafting those questions.

Making sure they are very pertinent for your potential client or prospect and really sort of diving into that is important. And then, lastly, I think post-covid relationships based selling, I think, has become even more important. In fact, pre-covid, I think it was almost going out of favor if you will like you. Did you know it was? It was very much like spray and fray. And like, we’re just gonna send a lot of emails and hope for the best.

Bob Woods 00:40:31.490 –> 00:40:37.260

Hoping tactics over a little bit more in the process than giving away from relationships?

Lisa Scotto 00:40:38.490 –> 00:40:37.260

Yeah. And I think post-covid, I’ve learned that you have to be even more adept at a relationship based on selling and adding value, And you can’t just rely on somebody seeing your brand and now reaching out to you and somebody trying to have a 30 min phone call with you, right? Like that rarely happens. So how do you again provide value and really form a relationship with someone so that they want to do business. Maybe not now, maybe not 6 months from now. But you’re playing.

Bob Woods 00:41:12.550 –> 00:41:26.480

Oh, my God, yes, I mean yes, so many people are concerned about the short term, which I mean, you know that’s what sales is. You know. What have you done for me lately, but at the same time you have to keep focused on the long term, too.

 Lisa Scotto 00:41:26.930 –> 00:41:27.690

Right.

Bob Woods 00:41:27.860 –> 00:41:53.039

So with that I always like to wrap these up with a you know, what’s one thing someone can do right now to improve whatever their situation is. So I think in this case, we’re gonna ask, what is one thing someone can do right now to effectively implement power questions within their sales process? The one thing immediately.  

Lisa Scotto 00:41:53.170 –> 00:42:11.540

I think one thing is to prepare. So go into your next meeting and have 3 power questions prepared for your client meeting, and really think about how to ask those questions in a way where it allows the client to share more, tell you more, and storytell themselves.

Bob Woods 00:42:13.290 –> 00:42:18.860

But way to wrap up. If our listeners want to get in touch with you, Lisa, how would they do that?

Lisa Scotto 00:42:19.310 –> 00:42:41.230

Great. So Linkedin is the best place for Lisa Scotto Pomeranning, and I own LMS Growth Consulting. And so happy to be here. Bob, thank you. 

Bob Woods 00:42:31.290 –> 00:43:04.860

Yeah, you’re welcome. And and and in case you want to look up the website directly. It’s LMS, just like it sounds like. Growth consulting, All one word, no dashes or any kind of weird things like that.com so LMS growth consulting dot com. So Lisa Scotto, founder of sales strategy and business development consulting firm. We just heard about LMS Growth Consulting. Thank you for joining us today and I really had a great time talking about a whole bunch of different things. But I think they are really gonna help the audience today.

Bob Woods 00:43:05.620 –> 00:43:07.200

Awesome. Thank you, Bob. 

Lisa Scotto 00:43:08.310 –> 00:43:15.230

This is great, good, good, and thank you for streaming this episode of Making Sales Social. So remember when you’re out, and about this week be sure to make your sales social.

Outro  31:48

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