Socratic Selling

• Socratic Method:  A method of teaching or discussion, as used by Socrates, in which one asks a series of easily answered questions that inevitably lead the answerer to a logical conclusion.
• Today’s buyer doesn’t want to be talked at. Today’s buyer wants to be heard. Respect the customer.
• Socratic selling respects the customer by taking each answer seriously. Unless the information coming from the customer is taken into account, the dialogue cannot continue.
• Help the customer think. The reason you must do this is because the customer is the source of information. Nothing happens until you access the source and draw out the information.
• With the right questions, salespeople can make it easier for customers to sort out what they know.
• Every time you show you grasp a thought or idea expressed by the customer, the dialogue advances.
• Socratic dialogues do not follow a script; the buyer is your partner. Each of his answers is a necessary step on the way to a “logical conclusion”
• Gradually, the customer concludes that you know the customer’s business and that you can be trusted to work in the customer’s interest.
• Customers who feel they have been professionally treated will return.
• In the customer’s mind the meeting is about him. It’s the customer’s meeting, not yours.
• The questions you ask tend to be directed beams of light with some type of motive.
• Questions control the way the customer becomes involved in the discussion. The focus of the question limits what the customer can say.
• The questions seem to extract the information in nuggets.
• Every customer has a perspective on a subject and is only too happy to share it. Ask.
• The customer owns yesterday, the salesmen’s eye is on tomorrow.
• Help the customer think about the need. The customer should be talking 80 percent of the time.
• Not one moment is wasted when the customer is speaking about the need. Your ability to handle this process will weigh heavily in your favor later in the dialogue.
• Ready-made questions also help you to concentrate on the customer instead of thinking of new questions.
• Socratic probes are tools that encourage the customer to share a unique viewpoint.
• The customer has no stake in the future until the past has been deal with.
• When time urgency is a part of the need picture, it has an impact on closing.
• The feelings that personalize the buying decision can be looked at on three levels: irritants, motivators, and relationships based on trust.
• Given the chance, the customer will keep talking.
• If you begin with the Socratic process, you are committed to getting their perspective.
• Make your customer look good and you will be invited back again and again.
• If the customer has personalized the need with you and discussed it at the gut level, then you have been taken into confidence. You are becoming an insider. You have taken the time and effort to hear the whole story. You now know more, and because you know more, you are seen as better equipped to address the need. The customer has already begun to invest in you.
• Listening is being there with your mind, with your whole person. Understanding requires all the effort you can expend.
• Customers like to see you write as they talk. 
• The only way to demonstrate that you’ve listened is to “play back” to the customer what you’ve heard. Your ability to summarize demonstrates understanding.
• Listening lays the ground for a business relationship.
• Proposals that fit are ready for agreement.
• Every question has a purpose. Ask strategically, and then listen.
• You can’t exploit a question you don’t understand.
• Do not be apologetic about seeking clarification.
• Never miss a topic the customer wants to introduce. Never miss a chance to help the customer think.
• By voicing an objection, the customer lets you know that making a commitment is a risk.
• If anything in the proposal seems amiss, the customer will test you on the point of perceived risk.
• Objections are also a sign of interest. They’re a way of expressing a desire to buy.
• Instead of refuting the objection, you played it back and asked questions to better understand it. You show interest in the issue or concern behind the objection.
• Plan for objections before you’re with the customer. Many just react to objections. A reaction is a first or “gut” response. Reactions don’t give you a plan to proceed; they don’t even have a goal.
• Instead of routinely going into the discount mode of negotiating, try holding the price and increasing the value the customer will receive. Adding value doesn’t necessarily increase costs.
• Getting your price by adding value cements the relationship.
• Don’t give away what you can trade for.
• If you immediately concede, what does that say about the integrity of the proposal?
• Concessions don’t help you work together. Trade; don’t concede. Trading is an expanded form of selling.
• Everybody wants it fast, cheap, and good, but the most anybody can get is two of the three.

Source: Socratic Selling by Kevin Daley