I have been lucky to be around one of the best sales trainers, motivators and leaders around. He knows sales like no one else. As a result, when there is a sales problem, he knows how to fix it.

You might have this problem in your own company because it is very typical for the experienced sales rep. After weeks or months of constant improvement and ever-increasing sales, the sales rep hits a plateau or worse, suffers a decline in his business. He is doing the same thing, he says, and most sales managers cross their fingers and hope their star performer can re-gain his stride.

Instead, it might be this: the sales rep is out of alignment with his customer or prospect. It happens to brand new and experienced sales reps. You expect it with new sales people but not with the older.

Here’s what happens–a good sales person asks his prospect a lot of questions, open ended questions, current situation questions and so forth. These questions help the sales rep discover the key issues facing the prospect, and more questions help define not only the problem more clearly, but discover if there is a reason to do business in the future.

Being in alignment means that the sales rep must always go through this process, he must always develop the pain in the prospect with questions and then listen hard to the answers. The experienced rep, having seen and heard many of these situations before, hears an answer to the first question and leaps way out ahead of the prospect, and gets to the solution way too early. He KNOWS what the prospect wants, his product or service , right now. No need to mess with those pesky questions, he is thinking. Wrong, Kemosabe.

It is like a doctor who, for the 27th time this week hears the same symptoms from a new patient. A good doctor will still ask more questions, do an exam, and make sure his early diagnosis is correct. Before he presents his findings, or solution, or prescription. The patient ( the prospect) would feel badly if the doctor said, “I have heard these symptoms a lot this week, you have this,” without going through the entire exam process. In this case, the doctor is out of alignment with his patient.

Your sales reps should make sure that they are going through the same process with every prospect and customer. Being out of alignment almost always results in declining sales.