Those of you who don’t know my colleague Patricia Fripp are in for a treat. Fripp is a former President of the National Speakers’ Association, and is a member of their prestigious Speaker Hall of Fame.
Not only is she a great speaker, she is also a great coach, which is not all that common. A lot of great speakers have no patience with amateurs.
She likes to work on the West Coast, and I like to work in the East, so together we cover the continent.
Here is her recent newsletter on the subject of asking good questions in a sales situation.
Making Your Mark with Questions
by Patricia Fripp
Basic Openers. The first priority is to learn as much as you can about pain points, and what the current environment is like:
? What is your biggest challenge, and what do you think the cause is?
? How long has it been going on?
? Are you doing anything about it currently, or have you in the past?
? If you could solve it, what would it be worth?
Staying on Track. While you don’t want to control the conversation too overtly, you need to focus on gaining an understanding of how they can benefit from a relationship with you. Use follow-up questions for clarity, such as:
? Can you give me a little more detail about that?
? Could you give me a specific example?
? How often does this happen?
Show Me the Money. Finding the decision maker and/or economic buyer (the person who can sign the check) is paramount. If you are not sure, ask:
? Whose budget would this come from?
? Who can immediately approve this project, or support this initiative?
? Can you help me better understand your purchasing process?
Back Pocket Questions. These are all-purpose, but particularly useful when you hear objections:
? Why do you say that about…?
? Can you help me better understand…?
Of course, the above questions are purposely generic to show the principles—your questions will need to be tailored to your own circumstances. Consider this example from my own business. As a sales presentation skills trainer, all my inquiries are incoming. Usually I hear, “What is your approach to sales presentation skills training?”
My goal is to gracefully ignore the question and find out more about them. So, I start the conversation by finding where the inquiry came from. “Can we step backwards for a moment? Were you referred or am I the end of a Google search?” No matter the response, my next question is, “May I ask what just happened for you to be looking for a sales presentation skills trainer?” Quite often, I hear, “We just lost a sale we were confident we were going to win.”
Now I go into mission mode, asking some of the following questions, as fit the circumstance:
? May I ask how much would it have been worth to your company if you had made the sale?
? Is that a small, medium or large sale?
? How long is the life of a normal client?
? What is the average client worth to you?
? How many sales professionals do you have?
? How many final sales presentations do they deliver?
? Do you keep statistics on your closing rate?
Can you see what I am finding out? 1) What the problem is; 2) how big the problem is; and 3) what it’s costing the company. But here is the key: You must let the prospect work out the cost for themselves. Notice at this point I have not told them how I will solve the problem. Their itch, however, is now a welt.
Until you have the right information from the prospect, you do not know what approach to take to solve their problem. Remember, the prospect is more interested in themselves than you—which means it is impossible to give a great presentation until you know where your focus needs to be.