The most noticeable difference between the mediocre salesperson and the outstanding sales professional is the degree to which each relies upon strategic questions throughout the sales presentation. By definition, strategic questions are those specifically designed for a distinct purpose.

Despite what we may have been taught previously in old-fashion sales training, it is not a brilliant sales spiel that makes us better able to influence buying decisions, but rather a reliance upon questions as the only true language of power selling. This is the biggest difference between traditional feature-benefit sales techniques and modern, consultative approaches.

As I travel the country observing hundreds of sales presentations each year, very clear patterns become apparent. For example, the leasing people I observe typically talk about 80% of the time during their sales presentations while their well-trained and successful counterparts only talk about 20% of the time. And most of what these true experts say is in the form of a question.

The average leasing consultant today asks only a meager 4 to 6 questions before reciting as many of the mostly irrelevant, memorized features and benefits as he or she can remember at the moment. Then it's off to the model on a whirlwind, Vanna White tour. This approach makes it seem to observers and prospects alike as though our entire industry is in way too much of a hurry to get back to the clubhouse.

The underlying reason for all the questions used by expert salespeople is to try to pinpoint prospects' most pressing priorities and problems and, if possible, to simultaneously position our community in their minds as the best way to fulfill those particular needs. There is a strong similarity between the way truly professional salespeople use questions and the way a physician arrives at a diagnosis. After all, who asks more questions than a doctor? Not surprisingly, the most common complaint about otherwise technically brilliant doctors is that "the doctor did not make me feel as though he cared about me, he just did not ask enough questions". Much of the time doctors will ask us questions even though they already know the answers. They do this because of the positive effect their strategic questions (questions with a purpose) have on their patients. I will discuss this rather astounding phenomenon later in this article.

In our profession, it is key to remember what we are actually attempting to do in our sales presentations: we are trying to understand how the prospect's life works and how the apartment will fit into that life.

There is an interesting side benefit to incorporating excellent questions into our sales presentations. Leasing people who have improved their questioning skills often say they had no idea their prospects' needs were so different and interesting. These leasing consultants had begun to see prospects as "generic". The ironic thing is that "generic" is also how prospects tend to see us and our apartment communities: "generic"

salesperson, "generic" apartment (carpeted eggshell-colored box, just like all the others). If you ask great questions, you won't see prospects as generic anymore and vice versa. This is the same phenomenon which caused your parents to become so much smarter between the time you were 12 and 22.

As you now realize, they did not really get much smarter during those years, rather you became more aware of how truly wise they were all along.

Prospects have been incredibly observant, diverse and interesting all along; we just did not see it because we failed to ask enough relevant questions.

We, in the property management industry are very much "people people", as the expression goes, and we are not going to radically change from that personal inclination any time soon. I know this because we probably would not be willing to put up with the hassles we deal with each working day if we were not so inclined. Instead we would be lighthousekeepers or actuaries or statisticians or anesthesiologists (most of the folks these doctors interact with are either unconscious or about to become that way) or, perhaps, even shepherds (though the employment outlook for this group is rather bleak these days). The skillful use of strategic questions will actually make your job even more rewarding because it will improve the quality of your interactions with prospects. We are willing to put up with the many challenges we face each day because we genuinely love to be around people. Questions make other people even more fun.

Here are several more reasons why questions are so unbelievably powerful in our lives:

Obviously, questions are the most common way we gather information.

Questions make us very hard to ignore; they keep other people's attention focused where we want it to be. It is difficult for prospects to "space out"

during our sales presentations when they are busy formulating answers to our fine questions.

Questions prevent us from lapsing into a boring and ineffective feature-benefit spiel.

Questions help us to talk only 20% of the time, forcing us to be quiet and listen to what our prospects' responses are. Questions automatically convert

a monologue into a dialog.

Questions focus other people's thoughts and feelings, yours as well at your prospect's. Questions are one of the only sure-fire ways to control another person's thinking.

Questions calm people down. Questions calm prospects because you are helping them to focus on the task at hand. Questions calm sales professionals because they are not struggling to recite a memorized sales pitch. Such professionals take appropriate questions from a carefully chosen selection

and skillfully interject them into their sales presentations.

Questions wake prospects up. Apartment hunting can be exhausting and prospects are often "sleepwalking" through the process of choosing their

next home because it is such a tiring, monotonous process.

Here is the strangest thing that questions do: they make you seem smarter and more credible. I am not entirely sure why. Perhaps this is because the smartest people in our lives tend to ask the best questions. So when we encounter people artfully using questions in a conversation, we interpret that as evidence of their intelligence. Isn't it peculiar that the very same people we go to for advice are the people who tend to ask us the best, most intelligent, thoughtful questions (doctors, lawyers, consultants, clergymen, et al). Isn't it ironic that the people we want to hear most want to hear us even more?

So, what does a strategic question look and sound like? Here...have a bunch of them:

This may seem like an odd question but how will you know when you have found the right apartment?

How did you decide which apartment to choose the last time you moved?

What was the final determining factor in your decision?

How many communities do you plan to visit in person?

What absolutely, positively has to be available at your next apartment home for you to be happy there?

What are the "dealbreakers"; what cannot be going on at your new apartment for you to be happy there?

Have you ruled out any communities yet?

What questions do you have at this point?

Where are you in the process of choosing an apartment?

Do you know anybody who lives here?

How long does it take to get to work from your current apartment?

When do you need to have a decision made?

Do you entertain a lot?

What furniture are you working with?

What do you know about our community?

What is your objective for this visit? For today?

Why didn't you choose one of our competitors?

What worries you about finding your new apartment?

Have you considered the non-monetary advantages of living here?

Is anything making it difficult for you to find what you're looking for?

Is there anything that frustrates you about apartment living?

What pleases you most about your present apartment?

What do you like most about our community?

Would you consider a smaller apartment that's more in line with what you wish to pay?

What have you liked at other communities?

Do you think your spouse will like this apartment?

Can you think of any reasons you wouldn't choose this apartment?

Is this what you expected?

Would it help if your spouse could see this apartment?

If it weren't for (the size of the rooms or the rent amount or whatever), would you rent this apartment?

What would a "perfect" apartment be like?

If you find what you're looking for, when would you like to move in?

Could you make your decision right here?

Is there anything you would like me to discuss that I have not?

If you decide not to live here, where do you think you'll go?

So, what would an intrepid leasing consultant like you actually do with such a list of strategic questions? I recommend that you simply read this entire list, top to bottom, right before every sales presentation for the next month. There is no need to force yourself to memorize them. Soon enough (to your surprise and delight), these questions and many other great ones you will add quickly become a comfortable, unforced part of your natural vocabulary. You will soon use them incorporating your own individual delivery style, preferred words and syntax. By the end of one month, you will be a much more effective sales person.

Some sales trainers love to go into elaborate (and tedious) detail about all sorts of categories of questions and try to tell you exactly when to ask each particular question. This approach is simply not realistic; life is just not that predictable. All you have to do is ask questions that come to mind naturally and the process will take care of itself.

Here is some excellent final advice:

Take notes during your presentations. Don't doctors and lawyers take lots of notes? You should too, mostly because when you begin to use questions to modernize your sales approach you will be obtaining a lot more information from each prospect. Do not bother to ask permission, jsut take nores.

Talk significantly less when first getting to know a prospect. Ask terrific questions and let them do the talking. They will love you for it.

Use questions as a compass to tell you where to direct your presentation.

And generally allow the prospect to control the direction and content of the presentation.

Discuss mainly the issues the prospect wants to cover and leave your personal agenda out of the presentation. Skip topics that the prospect clearly is not likely to be interested in hearing about.

Learn to be comfortable with pauses in the conversation. Do not try to fill these silent moments with meaningless chatter. Let prospects think.

Understand that the more you talk, the greater your chances are for making a mistake or confusing the prospect with too much information. If you drown prospects in information, they may begin to perceive your community as "generic". This can have the disastrous effect of making your rent seem too high because prospects are so awash in trivia that they can no longer see your community's important marketing advantages.

Few other quick and easy changes will have such a profoundly positive effect on your leasing effectiveness as implementation of a sales strategy recognizing the vital importance of strategic questions. Do you agree?