Originally published at www.quotafactory.com on March 27, 2015.

Are You Training Your Sales Team to Gather Sales Context?

In sales development, sales context is critical for developing the foundation of your sales pipeline.

Historically, sales representatives spend an extensive amount of time spreading sales content. However, in today’s tech-savvy world, where there is always more than one solution to a business problem, it’s important to also take the time to gather sales context.

Sales context helps B2B marketers and sales development reps ensure that the right solution is being matched to the right business challenge. It also, conveniently, help more sales reps reach quota, which is absolutely critical when only 54% of salespeople are making quota. Here are some ways to teach you sales development team to gather sales context in their next conversations.

Understand business objectives and end-goals to gather sales context.

Many prospects spend a lot of time planning next year’s goals during annual meetings, and therefore very important decisions are made at one point in the year. Once a plan is in place, there’s really not much wiggle room to add in additional initiatives. While your solution might interest them, timing can be an obstacle.

To overcome this objection, train your reps to ask these questions:

• Where is your team allocating budget dollars this year?
• What issues are at the forefront of your to-do list?

Understanding where resources are being allocated will give your reps a good idea of the organization’s goals for improvement. Be sure that your reps make note of when these planning periods occur in your CRM. That way, next time, your team can follow up before anything has been decided.

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Determine surface issues first and then take the time to dive deeper.

Many teams adopt a more targeted approach when initiating conversations in order to gather specific information that will allow them to quickly determine fit. However, close-ended or highly-specific questions may cut conversations short, or worse, cause important information to be omitted altogether.

Instead, train your sales development reps to open a conversation with a general question, such as:

• What does your process for xyz look like?
• How are you currently doing xyz?

This will allow the prospect to guide and shape the conversation. Once your reps have a general idea of the prospect’s environment, they will be able to dive deeper into potential trigger points.

Problem-solve with your prospect, not for them.

By now, it’s basic sales training to teach sales development reps to talk with prospects, not at them. However, this advice can prove difficult to follow if your rep uncovers a fit for your product and wants to tell your prospect all about the solution. It’s important to remind sales development reps that active listening is key to an initial sales conversation, and will help them uncover sales context in the most natural way possible.

In order to let your prospect lead the conversation, have your reps ask questions like:

• How do you plan to tackle this issue?
• What steps are you taking to alleviate this problem?

This will help guide your prospects towards understanding where your solution fits in to their established plan of attack.

What are some ways that you train your sales development team to uncover sales context in their conversations? Are there any particular questions that you feel work the best?

Originally published at www.quotafactory.com on March 27, 2015.