Asking effective, thought-provoking, and open-ended questions is one of the traits that distinguishes high-performing sales reps from the rest of the pack. It's one of those key sales skills that helps salespeople uncover needs and reveal decision drivers to help their customers make the best choice for their business.
But there's another side of the equation. When prospects and customers ask important questions, how do you provide the answers to them? How you respond to their questions is equally as important as how you ask yours.
An Introduction To Sales Psychology
To dive into the topic of questions, answers, and good communication, we sat down with Dr. Brian Glibkowski, professor at North Central College and CEO and Founder of Semplar Science, a PhD led consulting firm, known for applying the scientific method to business analytics to improve decision making and create real change.
He is also the author of Answer Intelligence: Raise your AQ, a book that showcases how readers can not only elevate their understanding of questions and answers but also reimagine what it means to communicate effectively through sales psychology.
We hope sales reps and leaders will get great value from learning about the psychology of selling and the academic aspects of questioning and answers.
You can listen to the full interview on our SALES with ASLAN Podcast Episode 99.
As an academic, Dr. Glibkowski researches questions and answers, but his research mainly focuses on how answers are provided.
What he learned about providing answers can be applied to any field, especially as a sales professional who relies on questioning and answering to drive each sales conversation.
If you're in a selling environment and looking to close a deal, how do you provide your answers to a customer's questions?
6 Answer Types For Any Sales Situation
Dr. Glibkowski's research led to the discovery and organization of 6 “answer types” that anyone, personally or professionally, can use in any conversation. This approach is rooted in human behavior principles that can help you better connect with your target audience. For sales reps, these answer types are used to respond to important client questions. They are as follows:
Story: Building Credibility Through Success Stories
Stories are a powerful way to connect with prospects by showcasing success, providing anecdotal evidence, or leveraging social proof. For example, sharing how a previous client overcame a challenge similar to your prospect’s helps them visualize how your solution can deliver results. Stories humanize your product or service, make your pitch relatable, and build trust by demonstrating proven success.
Metaphor: Painting a Picture for Clarity
Metaphors create vivid comparisons that simplify complex ideas, making them easier for prospects to understand and remember. At ASLAN, we call these Word Pictures because they translate abstract concepts into tangible imagery. For example, describing your product as “a safety net for your supply chain” helps prospects grasp its value in a practical and relatable way.
Theory: Explaining Cause and Effect
Theories help prospects understand how your solution leads to the outcomes they care about by establishing a cause-and-effect relationship. For instance, explaining how increased employee engagement (cause) can drive higher productivity and customer satisfaction (effect) positions your solution as the logical choice to achieve their goals. This approach appeals to analytical thinkers and reinforces your credibility.
Concept: Defining What Matters
Key concepts provide the foundation for understanding your product’s unique value. For example, if reliability is central to your product or service, explain it in practical terms: “Reliability means 99.9% uptime, ensuring your business operates without disruption.” Defining these concepts helps prospects align your product or service with their priorities.
Procedure: Mapping the Journey
Outlining a procedure shows prospects the clear steps involved in working with you, reducing uncertainty, and building confidence. For example, you could say, “We start with a needs assessment, followed by a tailored implementation plan, and provide ongoing support to ensure success.” This approach reassures prospects that you have a structured, professional process.
Action: Demonstrating Features and Functions
Actions highlight your solution's specific behaviors or capabilities, translating its features into tangible benefits. For instance, if your product includes automated reporting, explain how it saves time by delivering insights directly to their inbox every morning. This level of detail helps prospects visualize how your solution fits into their daily operations.
In the framework of sales psychology, “Story” and “Metaphor” answers are a great way to engage the emotional side of the brain when helping a customer embrace your recommendation. When making a decision, human beings use both sides of the brain, logical and emotional, left and right. Very few decisions are made without engaging both sides, especially in B2B sales where it is rare that customers buy impulsively.
Understanding Questions and Answer Types
On the Raise your AQ website, you can find a graphic that maps various questions to the different answer types. The answer types align and interface with different question words. To make the picture a little more clear here are a few examples:
"What" Questions
Example: "What is your product?"
When prospects ask "What" questions, they’re seeking clarity and understanding. Sales reps should respond with answers that simplify complex ideas using concepts or metaphors. For instance, if you’re selling a software solution, you might describe it as “a GPS for your business processes,” making the value easier to grasp. Using an approach based on sales psychology not only informs but also makes your product or service memorable, a huge advantage when selling in a competitive market.
"Why" Questions
Example: "Why should I buy from you?"
"Why" questions reflect a deeper curiosity about your value proposition. The key to answering these effectively is to tap into the emotional and logical drivers of your prospect by providing either a theory that supports your solution or a story that illustrates its benefits. For example, sharing how your product solved a common pain point for a similar customer helps establish trust and credibility through compelling social proof. Stories humanize your brand and make your message resonate on a personal level and lead to sales success.
"How" Questions
Example: "How do we work with you?"
When a prospect asks "How" questions, they’re typically trying to visualize the process of integrating your solution. Here, it’s essential to provide clear, actionable steps or describe the procedure in straightforward terms. For instance, you could say, “We start with a quick onboarding call to understand your needs, followed by a three-step implementation plan tailored to your business.” Answers that leverage sales psychology, such as this, not only address their query but also set expectations and reduce potential concerns about complexity.
All six answer types have to be considered within the immediate context – i.e. if you're using a case study as a story answer in a conversation with a potential customer with a bank, the story provided should be one about a bank.
How Sales Psychology Can Lead To Sales Success
To better understand sales psychology let's dive into the application of the psychological and academic side of questions for salespeople. This information is based on a chapter of Answer Intelligence called “Sales AQ” which Dr. Glibkowski co-wrote with several experts in the field of sales.
Improving Your Value Proposition
Within the Answer Intelligence framework, a value prop should succinctly and preemptively respond to all potential prospect questions by providing all six answer types.
Dr. Glibkowski has conducted exercises with sales organizations where sales reps and leaders break down their solution's value proposition by going around the “answer wheel” and coming up with something for each of the six answer types (a story, a metaphor, an action, a procedure, a concept, and a theory) that relates back to the value proposition.
It's a simple exercise to help sales teams think about how to answer customer queries in the most effective way and generate a positive emotional response.
Here is a real-world example:
Dr. Glibkowski was working with a professional services provider who provided sourcing solutions for global corporations. Their product was so sophisticated and complicated that their buyers often didn't understand it. Using the Answer Intelligence framework, under the guidance of Dr. Glibkowski, the organization and sales teams developed a portfolio of metaphors for sales reps to explain their solution to prospects.
This was only possible because the organization took a comprehensive and systematic look at all the possible answer types that could be provided, and chose the most logical, effective answer type to use in their sales strategy.
Sales Psychology and the Virtual Sales Environment
Dr. Glibkowski has also worked with sales organizations that have noticed a downturn in sales and leads with the onset of virtual selling.
Before the pandemic, sales professionals may have relied on in-person relationship building, water cooler talk, and drop-ins to fuel their pipeline. But with virtual sales becoming the new norm, many companies have found that there is a great need for new ways of communication. To get creative and be better communicators, Dr. Glibkowski says:
“A framework like Answer Intelligence can help us rethink the basics (of conversation and communication). What are the questions, what are the answers, how do we organize our conversations to be most effective?”
OtherCenteredⓇ Questions and Answers
According to Dr. Glibkowski, his company has a simple but radical view of communication. He says, “Communication is simply a question-and-answer exchange. Everything else is noise.”
There is an overlap between the missions of ASLAN (training) and Raise Your AQ (research and application), since we are both in the business of developing people.
We see this, especially in the idea that conversations cannot and should not be self-serving. At ASLAN, we believe that if you are doing your job as a sales associate and being truly Other-Centered, you actually care more about the results from your customer's perspective.
It's less about convincing customers to buy and more about helping them make the best decision for their business. Your job is to provide the information and process to help them get there. Sales psychology is the mechanism to eliminate sales resistance and in turn, generate deeper conversations that build trust.
The discovery phase, in particular, should be conversational to establish a meaningful human connection. Sales reps should not rely on a canned list of questions to fire off at their prospects and customers rapidly.
Dr. Glibkowski has done quite a bit of research on this subject, based on data from Gong – an organization that has analyzed millions of sales calls over the years. Through the lens of the Answer Intelligence framework, Dr. Glibkowski and his team wanted to understand the role of questions at each sales stage.
Answer Intelligence Throughout The Sales Funnel
From the top of the funnel (awareness) to education and decision-making, each level relies on a question-and-answer exchange.
Gong's data has shown that sales reps who ask too many questions at the front end (top of the funnel), tend to lose deals. He believes this is due to a mechanical approach to asking questions and providing answers rather than a natural give-and-take rooted in sales psychology.
Gong's data also found that when questions and answers are balanced throughout the sales funnel, there tend to be more sales opportunities, higher win rates, and more consistent sales success. Being conversational is key.
These findings come back to the simple premise that conversations consist of a balanced exchange of questions and thoughtful answers – and sales reps have to think about each question or answer as a strategic move.
Conversation And The Reciprocity Principle
Understanding sales psychology means understanding that questions and answers aren't the X's and O's in a traditional sales playbook. Think of a matrix, with the buyer on the horizontal axis and the seller on the vertical axis. Each person can ask a question or answer, at any given point in the conversation. Because of this, it's important to think through each move.
Sometimes it's more productive to ask a question, while other times it's beneficial to provide more detail with an answer. When faced with a question, it may be better to respond with the answer (one of the six answer types), or by asking a clarifying question.
“Oftentimes with sales, there is a focus on question methodologies, which makes a lot of sense. But we have to also understand the answer side of the equation.” – Dr. Glibkowski
Going back to Gong's data on sales calls and win rates, it was determined that when a sales rep is cold calling to set appointments, asking too many questions at the front end of the sales process will hinder the sale.
Understanding The Reciprocity Principle
Prospects don't want to answer that many questions at the beginning. You have to provide an answer, within the Answer Intelligence framework, that will stimulate interest in the prospect and lead them to ask a corresponding question.
For example, sales reps could provide a concise metaphor, an easy-to-follow procedure, a key feature, or an answer that will prompt a question from the other person.
At ASLAN, we call this approach an Other-Centered Position (OCP), but at its core is sales psychology. The goal is to provide a reason for the customer to speak with the sales rep. Open the conversation with something the customer cares about, something on their whiteboard. Provide a disruptive truth that will create a gap in their understanding, and follow with a benefit from your solution that can help fill that gap.
Instead of firing off questions right from the start, leverage sales psychology to make a connection with your prospect first. Provide an “answer type” that will prompt them to ask a question. Get their brain working and quiet the noise. Doing this effectively will prompt your prospect to ask questions and engage with you.
This back-and-forth is the reciprocity principle and it is critical for sales success.
Using High AQ Practices In The Sales Process
Another chapter of Dr. Glibkowski's book explores the “High AQ Practices” concept he and his team uncovered during their research.
One of the high AQ practices they uncovered is "providing compliments.” Compliments are psychological triggers that reinforce an answer given. For example, if the buyer tells you a story about a pain point in their business, you could reply with, “I hear you, I get it.” But that doesn't really do much or move the conversation along.
However, it's very powerful to respond with a complimentary answer. If you can provide a metaphor that triangulates with the story the customer told you about their pain point, the buyer will feel understood.
You could also take the “pain point” story they told and explain it using cause and effect logic (a theory answer type). Now you've pivoted into a sophisticated, two-way conversation.
Complimentary answers are a powerful tool to create alignment and to move a conversation forward using answers.” – Dr. Glibkowski
So much of moving sales opportunities forward depends on the ability of sales reps' to truly listen. With the example above, a sales rep can prove how intently they have been listening and demonstrate that by replying with a complimentary answer that adds immediate value for the customer and helps them feel understood and validated. That is the power of sales psychology.
Answers Provide Influence
There's a thought experiment that states, “You cannot ask a question unless it starts with an answer.”
Answers provide influence.
We only ask questions because our answers are immature – because we need better answers. When planning your next call or engagement with a customer, think about the answers they may have and work backward to generate the questions you want to ask, to move that relationship along through a rewarding conversation.
These six answer types can be applied to any kind of conversation: sales, leadership, interview, personal, and so many more.
Summing Up Sales Psychology with Answer Intelligence
Dr. Glibkowski's book, Answer Intelligence: Raise your AQ, dives much deeper into the six answer types (story, metaphor, theory, concept, procedure, and action), and identifies five High AQ practices that distinguish expert communicators.
It includes real-life examples of elevated answers, featuring chapters covering a different form of AQ such as Sales AQ, Interview AQ, Coaching AQ, and more, all of which revolve around sales psychology.
With contributions from representatives of organizations such as Salesforce, Center for Healthcare Innovation, and Boston Mutual Life Insurance, as well as academics, the book provides comprehensive insight into AQ from across the professional and research spaces.
If you're interested in more sales psychology tips, read more from Answer Intelligence: Raise your AQ. You can get your copy for 30% off here using promo code: ANSWER30.
