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    A more curious sales team is a more successful sales team

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    Curiosity isn’t something we talk a lot about in sales. We use words like “discovery,” and “probing questions,” and “active listening” to describe skill sets that salespeople should master. But what if these skill sets were less important than the mindset behind them? And what if the critical mindset is curiosity?

    Many, maybe even all, of the world’s most creative inventors were marked by curiosity. Michelangelo, Tesla, Marie Curie, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein. Einstein once said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

    Some of the world’s great sales and business thinkers value curiosity highly as well. Dale Carnegie once said that you can make more friends in two months by becoming very interested in other people than you can in two years trying to get other people interested in you.

    I believe that in the sales world, we are not talking enough about curiosity. I believe that curiosity about other people - their needs, their wants, their motivations, their situations - is a key component of what makes a salesperson successful.

    What is curiosity?

    There’s an old children’s book series, popular in the United States, called Curious George. Curious George is a monkey who is constantly getting himself and his owner into trouble through his curiosity.

    I’ve sometimes been called “Curious George” because I am constantly questioning, wanting to know more, wanting to learn about everything. I can’t seem to stop seeking answers to endless questions. I like to think it hasn’t gotten me into as much trouble as my monkey namesake, and it’s definitely a characteristic that has taken me a long way in life and business.

    Curiosity is the quality of being interested in learning, exploring, and investigating to know more about a topic, or in general about the world. A curiosity mindset is a mindset of always wanting answers to questions about what, who, where, when, and, especially why.

    A curious person will ask a lot of questions, and pursue follow-ups to satisfy their need to know. They may research, make inquiries with experts, and hunt down resources to get to the bottom of their burning questions.

    Importantly, curiosity implies caring. If you don’t care about something, you won’t have the curiosity to pursue information about it.

    Why curiosity is critical on sales teams

    Too often, salespeople think their job is to share information or to convince a buyer to make a purchase. On the contrary, the job of the salesperson is to establish trust, align with the buyer’s needs, and help them grow in the direction they want to go.

    Curiosity is a central mindset in all three. Trust grows with intimacy, and nothing grows intimacy like sharing and receiving information about each other. Curiosity, which includes caring, leads salespeople to ask questions and draw information out of buyers. This information sharing creates a bond of trust and intimacy between the two that is a foundation for effective sales.

    Second, curiosity enables the salesperson to uncover information critical to alignment with the buyer. When the salesperson genuinely cares about the buyer’s needs, their situation, what they’re trying to accomplish, and the challenges they face, they won’t need a script full of probing questions. They’ll simply follow the trail and ask the questions to get the information they need in order to line up with the buyer and understand how they can help them.

    Curiosity enables salespeople to uncover information critical to alignment with the buyer.

    Teams who lack curiosity can learn scripts, lists of probing questions, and process steps all day long and still not be successful. Buyers know when a salesperson is asking questions in order to manipulate, versus when they’re asking because they genuinely want to get to know them. Only the latter builds the trust necessary to make sales.

    Curiosity leads to collaboration

    In complex b2b sales, collaboration is key. When buyers feel that your team is collaborating with them to develop solutions, they are likely to buy more and feel better about the purchase.

    Curiosity about the buyer draws the buyer out and creates a reciprocal relationship. Humans are wired to want to reciprocate. If you do a favor for someone, they are wired to want to return the favor. Likewise, when you are curious about someone else, they are wired to want to become curious about you.

    In a sales situation, this looks like conversations where the salesperson gets the buyer talking and, in turn, the buyer then becomes curious about what the salesperson’s company has to offer. In this scenario, sharing becomes a collaborative process that leads to solutions for the customer and sales for the salesperson.

    Not too long ago, I had an experience where I had planned to demonstrate an ROI calculation to a potential buyer of our product. But I got curious about what was really behind the potential customer’s interest in our product and figured out that ROI wasn’t really a driving concern for him. Instead, I shared a story relevant to what actually mattered to him, and he immediately picked up that I was responsive to his actual needs, and it led to a fruitful outcome.

    If I had just followed my “script,” the buyer would have become bored and felt unheard. By following my curiosity and finding out what was really driving the buyer’s interest, I established trust and was able to align with his actual need.

    A curious salesperson wants to know what really drives the buyer, and what really matters to them. A curiosity-driven conversation can quickly uncover information that makes the sale easy. Once you know what the buyer wants, you can align with it. And because they’ve been transparent with you about what they want, they can easily see that the alignment is right and that the purchase is a good fit for them.

    Curiosity may be an inborn trait, but I think it can also be developed and grown. Where are you seeing curiosity on your teams? What are you doing to grow and develop it? I’d love to hear about it.

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    George Brontén
    Published May 12, 2021
    By George Brontén

    George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.

    Find out more about George Brontén on LinkedIn