Questions that Sell

by Paul Cherry

  Why These Questions?

  By using these techniques you can make the questions you ask prospective clients more powerful, engaging, and effective. Asking better questions will:

  •Motivate your prospective customers to do the talking. This requires that you fight your instincts to demonstrate all of the knowledge you have about your product or industry. Instead of boring a prospective customer, get her to open up to you by asking intelligent questions and then listening to her answers. Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, states that you can make a more significant impression on another person in ten minutes if you show interest in that person than if you were to spend six months talking about yourself. Asking good questions will make your prospective clients feel important.

  •Differentiate yourself from your competitors. Studies have shown that 90 percent of seasoned sales professionals do not know how to ask good questions or are afraid to ask them. If you learn how to ask good questions, you can automatically set yourself apart from your competition.

  •Demonstrate empathy for your prospective customers. Establishing yourself as someone who will listen to problems and frustrations will make your clients eager to talk with you. In our society, we tend to be impatient when discussing problems: We often want to jump to the solutions. Your prospective customers, however, need first to recognize and understand their problems before they will accept their need for assistance. By creating an environment where a customer feels you understand him, you will gain access to information you would otherwise not be privy to.

  •Facilitate a prospective customer’s awareness of his needs and help him come to his own conclusions. Even if it seems clear to you, you cannot tell your prospective customer what his problems are. You need to help him go through the process of discovering for himself the problems and then he will look to you for the solution. Even those prospective customers who are aware of their problems need you to ask good questions in order to bring that pain to the surface. The frustration and other feelings that go along with the problems they have encountered will motivate your prospective customers to act, but only if you pinpoint those concerns by asking good questions.

  •Prompt a prospective customer to recognize the importance of taking action. Once a prospective customer has uncovered her problems, she will not be hesitant to talk about possible solutions. In fact, she will be eager to discuss how you can help because she will have realized the need to rectify the situation.

  •Discover how a particular company makes a purchasing decision, as well as whom the decisionmakers are within the company. All of the questioning techniques you are about to learn will not do you any good if you are talking to the wrong person. By asking good questions and allowing your prospective customers to talk, you will be able to find out who makes the purchasing decisions and how those decisions are made within each particular company. Without this knowledge, relationship-building techniques are useless.

  •Bring to the forefront any potential obstacles that might hinder a potential sale. Asking good questions lets you in on the concerns of a prospective customer and his reservations about a purchase.

  What Do I Expect from You?

  Building real relationships takes time and energy. You should imagine your sales repertoire as a toolbox in which you already have the basics. As you learn the different question types presented in this book, you will be adding new, specialized tools to the existing set. Once you have added these tools, however, you must remember to use them correctly. If you try to remove a screw with a sledgehammer, you will not make much progress and you might ruin the wall while you are at it. Instead of jumping in with the first tool you see, take time to assess the situation and plan the best course of action. If you use the strategies in this book half-heartedly, they will not be effective; the various types of questions need to be carefully arranged and crafted for individual customers and salespeople. That time spent crafting will be recognized as well spent when you see the results of all your hard work.

  I have included exercises in almost every chapter of this book. These exercises reinforce the practices I share and allow you to perfect your questioning skills before you use them. It is important that you complete these exercises, otherwise you might not be able to fully grasp the various techniques. Also, it will be difficult to digest all of the material in one sitting. I suggest that you set aside time to read each chapter and do the appropriate exercises. Then go back and read the chapter once more to ensure that you understand how and when to use that type of question. If you spend the time learning how to use my questions of engagement, I have no doubt that you will succeed beyond your expectations.

  What Sorts of Problems Are Addressed in This Book?

  All of the problems and hurdles you experience each day as a professional salesperson will be tackled in this book. Here are some of the most common issues that I discuss in the following chapters:

  “I have trouble getting my foot in the door.”

  “Prospects are in a rush for information but want to wait on taking action.”

  “Customers say they value service but expect the lowest price.”

  “I feel like I am wasting too much time on opportunities that go nowhere.”

  “I get pushed down to deal with non-decisionmakers.”

  “I am ready to close the deal and then something comes up at the last minute to screw it up.”

  “All of the prospective customers I contact say they are not looking for new vendors, but I know they are not happy with what they have now.”

  “I cannot seem to get the right person.”

  “My presentations fall on deaf ears.”

  “They are always telling me they don’t have the money to make a purchase right now.”

  What Will I Find in This Book?

  At the most basic level, this book shows you how to ask questions that will get your customers talking. Salespeople are often afraid to let their customers talk. They fear that if a customer takes the conversation in the wrong direction, they will lose control and ultimately lose the sale. This could not be further from the truth. Customers have so much information they are just dying to divulge, if only we would give them the chance! When you use questions of engagement, you learn that you can control the direction of the conversation while allowing your customers to have the floor. Research has shown that during typical business interactions customers reveal only 20 percent of what is on their minds; as a salesperson who engages customers, it is your responsibility to get to the other 80 percent. Using my questioning techniques will enable you to unlock that information and use it to present your customers with tailored solutions that go beyond their expectations.

  The book begins with a self-evaluation of the typical questions you should ask prospective customers. You will learn by examining those questions that many of them do not produce the desired outcome. After this exercise, you will gradually augment your repertoire with new types of questions that not only inspire conversation but also make you stand out from the crowd. All of the question types that I discuss in the book enable you to communicate better with your customers. They also serve to help build business relationships that keep your customers coming back for more.

  At the heart of this book lies my belief that customers overwhelmingly respond to salespeople who express an interest in their businesses and their lives. As I say many times in the book, this does not mean that you should insist on engaging in idle small talk about sports, the weather, or other banal topics. What it does mean is that you need to cultivate real, strong relationships with your customers to make certain that their needs are met. This can happen only when you listen to your customers and really hear what they have to say. At times this might mean simply sitting there while a customer rants about your company’s poor service or unreliable delivery. Other times you might have to delve into personal topics, such as a client’s hopes and dreams. There could also be occasions when you will be privy to internal stru
ggles between a customer and his boss or among various departments within a company. Although these exchanges might be exhausting, this type of business relationship can withstand corporate takeovers and changes in technology. If you are willing to put in the time and effort to cultivate genuine relationships with your customers, success will be yours.

  CHAPTER

  1

  A Few Questions About . . . Questions

  SINCE THIS IS a book about questions, let’s start with a few:

  What, exactly, is a question? Why do we ask them? Why do we answer them? And why are they such a powerful selling tool?

  I like to think of a question as a truth-seeking missile. And that’s why a sales strategy that’s built on questioning is so powerful. The best way we can create value for our customers, our companies, and ourselves is to get to the truth. Much time and money is wasted by salespeople trying to sell the wrong people the wrong solutions to the wrong problems.

  As we all know, buyers don’t always tell the truth. Sometimes they hold back on purpose—to be polite, to get rid of you, to gain some perceived advantage over you, or to protect themselves. More often, buyers don’t tell you the truth because they don’t know it. They haven’t done the hard work to truly understand their own wants and needs.

  We tend to take questions for granted. But if you stop and think for a moment, something very strange happens when we ask a question: We usually get an answer. In fact, it’s hard not to answer a question. People even feel compelled to answer questions when it would be better to remain silent. Consider, for example, the familiar Miranda warning that we all know from police shows: Suspects actually have to be reminded that they don’t have to answer the police’s questions. Yet many do so anyway.

  There’s something deeply embedded in the human mind that creates a powerful compulsion to answer questions. If someone asks a reasonable question in a reasonable way, and for reasonable reasons, it’s almost unthinkable to refuse to answer. It would be seen as a rude, almost antisocial act.

  All human knowledge starts with questions. Nearly every profession and field of knowledge begins with a question. Detectives ask, “Whodunit?” Journalists ask, “What happened?” Science asks, “How does the world work?” Religion asks, “Why are we here?” Philosophy asks, “What is true?”

  Human beings learn, grow, and succeed by exchanging knowledge with other human beings. I believe that questions are rooted so deeply in our psyche because they’re the most efficient and effective tool at our disposal for acquiring knowledge. Good questions eliminate the extraneous and get to the heart of things. They allow us to acquire specific, useful, and relevant knowledge from other people. We don’t have to download all of the knowledge that another person has kicking around in her brain.

  But questions can do more than simply transfer knowledge from one brain to another. The best questions create new knowledge. The person being asked the question doesn’t just tell you what he already knows. By considering the question, he discovers something—about his situation, about his values, about his wants and needs—that he hadn’t understood before.

  That’s the transformative power of a question-based selling strategy. Good salespeople use questions to learn something about their buyers. Great salespeople use questions to help buyers learn something about themselves. If you can achieve that, it means you can start solving problems that other salespeople don’t even know exist. Even more important, it creates a deep bond between you and your buyer. “This isn’t just someone who can sell me stuff,” the buyer thinks. “This is someone who helps me grow.”

  A Hierarchy of Questions

  Much of this book is about asking deeper questions—questions that other salespeople might not think to ask, or might even be afraid to ask.

  There’s nothing wrong with simple, closed-end questions that a buyer can answer with a yes or no—such as, “Did you see an increase in sales last year?” Especially at the beginning of a sales relationship, you need to get some basic information. And simple questions are great for establishing rapport—they’re easy for prospects to answer and don’t seem threatening.

  But that’s where many salespeople stop. And if you don’t dig any deeper, you’ll never have more than a superficial relationship with your buyer. Of course, you have to earn the right to go deep with your buyer. It takes time for buyers to trust you enough to really open up. But when they do, you get to the truth. And a solution that speaks to the truth is a solution your customers will be eager to buy.

  Good Questions and Bad Questions

  Good questions get you closer to the truth. But some questions can lead you astray. They may create the illusion that you’re making progress when at best you’re going in circles. At worst, bad questions will drive buyers away. Here are some examples:

  •Leading questions. “So wouldn’t you agree that quality is the most important consideration?” “Don’t you want a secure financial future?” Questions like these aren’t designed to get the truth; they’re designed to get agreement. We learn nothing and the customer feels manipulated.

  •Lazy questions.“What industry are you in?” “Is this your only location?” This is information we could have gotten elsewhere, so questions like these simply waste your buyer’s time.

  •Self-serving questions. “What do you know about our company?” “Did you get a chance to look over the information I sent you?” “Are there any projects I can quote on?” “How’s my pricing?” “Do you have any questions for me?” “Would you like to see a demo?” Although it’s important to qualify and gauge a prospect’s interest, questions like these can suggest that you are more focused on your own interests than your customer’s. Like lazy questions, they can come across as product peddling or poking around for an opportunity instead of focusing on value-added solutions.

  •Trick questions. “Which one do you want—the red one or the blue one?” “If I could show you a way to save 25 percent on your costs, would you be interested?” Buyers see these questions for what they are—a gimmick to get them to do what you want.

  •Hostile or aggressive questions. “Didn’t you have a plan in place in case of a service outage?” “Why do you continue to invest in a program that hasn’t worked?” There’s great value in questions that prompt a buyer to rethink old assumptions or consider new information. But questions that are designed to put buyers on the spot or make them feel stupid—especially in front of others—will prompt buyers to disclose less, not more.

  A Plan for Better Sales Questions

  One of the key reasons that salespeople don’t ask better questions is because they lack a plan. Sales conversations can be stressful and a wrong turn can be disastrous. So salespeople often fall back on approaches that seem safe. They ask the usual sales questions in the usual way, as if they’re reading them off a list. They hesitate to dig deeper, because then they don’t know where the conversation will go. And they’re eager to move on to the thing they know best: talking about their products or services.

  If you have a plan—a set of tools—you can manage the questioning process with confidence. In the chapters that follow, we primarily focus on six types of questions that are specifically designed for sales. We’ll discuss them in greater depth in the chapters that follow, but here’s a quick overview:

  1. Educational questions. These are questions designed to enlarge a customer’s knowledge.

  2. Lock-on questions. These are questions that build on what buyers have told you, which allows you to extend the conversation and dig deeper into the issues they face.

  3. Impact questions. These are questions designed to explore the impact of challenges that the customer is facing.

  4. Expansion questions. These are questions designed to get buyers to enlarge on what they’ve told you, giving you greater insight into their needs.

  5. Comparison questions. These are questions that get buyers to compare one thing to another—an especially useful tool for identifying priorities and f
or gaining greater clarity.

  6. Vision questions. These are questions that invite the buyer to see what they stand to gain, and how you can help them achieve their goals, hopes, and dreams.

  Each of these question types is a powerful tool that allows you to engage your buyer on a deep level, while keeping the conversation on track and moving toward a sale. Once you master these six types, they’ll become second nature and you’ll know how to apply them in virtually any sales situation.

  And that leads to one more question: Are you ready to start digging deeper with customers and understanding their truths? If so, let’s get started.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Deadly Questions

  Are Your Questions Costing You Business, Leaving Money on the Table, and Putting Prospects to Sleep?

  YOU PROBABLY ALREADY have a number of questions you ask your clients during a sales call. For example:

  •What do you know about our company?

  •How can we help you?

  •Whom are you currently working with?