You already know the power of questioning (and LISTENING to the answers given). Your mantra is: Dig, dig, dig.
Your approach ~ should be one of helping your prospects…not interrogating them. Handled right, your questions will reinforce your genuine interest in them and a desire to help them and do what is in their best interest.
As further support for asking open-ended power questions to uncover a buyer’s true needs and desires, Xerox Corp. did research, as cited in the article, How To Bridge Higher Sales by Kerry Johnson:
Xerox Corp. discovered that if you can get a prospect (or client) to identify needs, there is a progressive chance that a sale will occur. The stats are:
- If you can uncover one need, there is a 36% chance of a sale closing, depending on your skills.
- If you can uncover two needs, there is a 52% chance of a sale.
- If you can uncover three or more needs, a sale occurs nearly 100% of the time.
Here are the absolutely indispensable Power Questions that should be in every sales consultant’s repertoire: (You can print these for future reference and use what is appropriate for your sales)
- What would you like me to know about your organization…and yourself?
- What do you value most in a relationship with a _____?
- What causes you the most headaches/worries/money?
- If you could change one thing about ______, what would it be?
- What do you like about your current situation/partner/provider?
- What would you have them do differently?
- If we worked together, what would we have to do for you to feel great about hiring us?
- How would you feel if we helped you fully achieve that outcome we just discussed?
- What issues are consuming most of your days? What ____ project is driving you crazy?
- If you could wave a magic wand, what would you do different that could help you save money/make more profit/be more efficient?
- What are your most important priorities?
- What prompted you to start this project/contact me now?
- What can you tell me about your decision-making process? Who else is involved in your decision-making process?
- How do you handle your budget considerations?
- What other options are you looking at?
- What can you tell me about the other people involved in the process?
- What challenges, concerns or obstacles are in the way of moving this forward?
- How will you be evaluating different options? What’s most important to you?
- How will the funding for the project be justified?
- How much support does this have at the executive level?
Closing Questions
- Based on what we discussed, I fully understand your situation and know we can help? When can we get started?
- What else, if anything, do I need to address before we get started together?
- How would it feel if you started getting help with ____ right now? Then, let’s get started
- How do you feel about what we discussed? How does it sound so far?
- Where would you like to go from here?
- What do you feel should be our next steps together?
- I would love the opportunity to help you How do you want to proceed?
- Get the answers to these questions, and take action based on those answers, and you’ll impress the prospect that you care about them and likely get the sale.
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