Asking better questions
Jerry L. Kennedy | TLT Selling Points April 2011
Follow these steps and improve your chances of getting a ‘yes.’
Asking great questions helps prospects self-select so that you can find the ones who really want to work with you.
We continue with our series of articles of getting to “no” faster and more often. You might be wondering why you would want to hear no more often. Hearing no means avoiding the sales-killing maybe and connecting with prospects who will tell you yes.
With that said, let’s move on to the next technique for getting to no—asking better questions.
Why should you ask questions to begin with? First, lose the illusion that qualifying questions help you close sales. Not so. Qualifying questions are meant to help you sift the wheat (potential buyers) from the chaff (friendly people who have trouble saying no and want to keep you in the maybe loop). Asking great questions helps prospects self-select so that you can find the ones who really want to work with you.
There are three simple questions to ask your prospect to determine if it’s feasible to continue the conversation.
No. 1: “What’s most important to you when it comes to...?” The purpose is to get an idea of the values of the prospect you’re talking to. If they answer, “Getting the lowest price and the best service possible,” you’re probably in for trouble, especially if your great service comes with a heftier price tag than your competitors.'
Of course, you’ll need to dig a little deeper than that. Pursuing the intent of identifying the values of the prospect, you might try asking them, “What else is important?” so you can evaluate their complete list of concerns by ranking them in order of importance.
No. 2: “Why is that important to you?” This allows the prospect to clarify, both to you and to them, whether there is a real opportunity for partnership. If a prospect says that getting the lowest price for your product is most important and yet they follow up by saying that they’re having cash flow problems and “by the way do you offer 60-day terms?” you know the opportunity is a risky one, right?
No. 3: “How will you know when you’ve achieved (whatever they said was most important to them)?” This part of the discussion will help you make sure there’s no confusion when it comes time to present possible solutions. If the prospect tells you at this point that he’ll know he’s getting the lowest price if his current vendor isn’t willing to match or beat it, again, it’s time to start packing your things and thinking of an exit strategy. This situation is clearly headed for a no!
However, what happens if your questions uncover a real opportunity to move the sale forward? What then? It’s time for the most important question of all.
You say, “So I have a question for you—keeping in mind the agreement we made at the beginning of this conversation about telling me no, if I could show you something that would give you (most important thing) that covered (why it’s important) and gave you (how they’ll know it when it’s right), would it be worth it to you to meet again and learn about that solution with an eye toward partnering on such a project?”
This is it—their opportunity to deliver a big fat no and let you off the
maybe hook, and the chances are pretty good it will happen. At the same time, you’ll also have improved your chances at getting a yes. And if you do, congratulations! You now have the green light to switch gears from getting a quick no to looking for the yes at the end of the funnel!
But before you start writing up that presentation, there’s one more thing you need to consider, and it’s the hardest thing to do— develop the ability to know when you should say no to the prospect.
In the next column, we’ll discuss this topic further.
Jerry Kennedy, CLS, is owner of Inside Out Business Solutions, a sales and customer service training organization. To learn more sales strategies, visit Jerry’s blog at http://jerrykennedy.com.
You can reach him at jerry@jerrykennedy.com.