Questions that Sell

by Paul Cherry

  Exercise 1

  Choose four or five of your questions from Exercise 1 in Chapter 2 that begin with either “who,” “what,” “where,” “why,” or “when.” Then, transform those questions into expansion questions that begin with one of the following phrases: “Describe for me,” “Share with me,” “Explain” “Walk me through,” “Tell me.”

  Notice that in this exercise I didn’t ask you to make all of your questions expansion questions. Expansion questions yield a lot of insight, but they require a lot of effort on the part of the buyer. So they need to be used judiciously. You also need to include some questions that buyers can answer easily, so that they feel the conversation is moving forward.

  Once you’re comfortable creating your own expansion questions, you will not need to worry so much about using the exact phrases I’ve suggested. However, I recommend that initially you construct your expansion questions using these templates, which are designed to get customers doing the talking. Once you have embraced that concept, feel free to change the wording to better fit your style.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Comparison Questions:

  Getting Customers to Think Sideways

  DIRECT QUESTIONS—FOR EXAMPLE, asking customers to tell you what they need or want—can only get you so far. Buyers get stuck because they can only imagine one solution to their problem. Or they’re not even thinking about the right problem. Or they’re following a path that will lead to a dead end, when they really need to think more creatively. A question from an unexpected direction can open up new avenues for a sale, surprising both you and your buyer.

  One type of question—the comparison question—is especially good at getting buyers out of a rut.

  As you have probably guessed from the name, comparison questions use some variant on the word compare, such as contrast, differ, as opposed to, versus, or from.

  Comparison questions are sophisticated and require some thought to put together. However, the benefits more than make up for the time and effort you invest. If you choose the right comparison, it can create a true “aha” moment for a buyer.

  A comparison question can open up several avenues for discussion, including:

  Time. Comparison questions can uncover events in the prospective customer’s past, as well as what he hopes for in the future. A comparison question can also help you identify those issues that are pressing concerns, as well as how these priorities shift over months and years.

  Decisionmakers. Comparison questions allow you, as the salesperson, to gain access to the inner workings of the organization and to find out who makes the big decisions. They allow you, as an outsider, to uncover competing or conflicting interests among employees of the company. You can easily find a champion (in the previous case, this would be Lisa) and identify possible pockets of resistance. Comparison questions open up the decisionmaking process and give you access to the politics within the organization. Being aware of potential political pitfalls can help you prepare a counterargument to any argument that might arise.

  The Prospect’s Competitors. Comparison questions can stimulate a dialogue with the prospect about the industry; they can lead to information about who is the competition, as well as what aspects of the company need improvement. Especially when you are meeting with higher-level decisionmakers, their concerns about differentiating the company’s products and services in a competitive market are the same concerns you face as a salesperson. Using a comparison question can help customers see that you relate to their situation and might have a solution.

  Alternative Choices. Comparison questions can open the door to new solutions for your prospective customers. You can ask questions that illuminate any dissatisfaction they feel with a current product or service and in turn show how your solution can eliminate those problems. Or you can ask questions that compare the current situation with an ideal or preferred situation.

  Ordinary Questions Transformed into Comparison Questions

  As with expansion questions, you can start with typical sales questions—ones you may be using already—and build on them to prompt buyers to make comparisons. Here are some examples:

  Time

  Ordinary: “What are your goals?”

  Comparison: “Share with me what you hope to accomplish in the next twelve months. How does this compare with where you are today?” Or, “Share with me what you hope to accomplish in the next twelve months compared with where you were one year ago.” Or, “Describe for me your goals three years from now.” Or, “Tell me about this year’s goals versus last year’s.”

  Decisionmakers

  Ordinary: “Who will make the final decision on this?”

  Comparison: “Please explain to me how the decisionmaking process for this project differs from past projects you’ve worked on.” Or, “You mentioned that Bill and Jane will both have to sign off on this project. Tell me what’s important to you, as opposed to what they’re looking for?” Or, “Share with me your thoughts on this approach and how it compares to what others on your team are saying.”

  Competitors

  Ordinary: “Who are your competitors?”

  Comparison: “Share with me the qualities that differentiate you from your competitors.” Or, “Your customers have a lot of choices today. Tell me what you believe are the unique attributes that set you apart from others in your market.”

  Pains and Gains

  Ordinary: “Tell me about what’s not working.”

  Comparison: “Tell me what’s working well versus what’s not working so well.” Or, “Compared with what you’ve seen in other organizations where you’ve worked, explain to me the gaps you see in your current organization.”

  Market Trends

  Ordinary: “How’s business?”

  Comparison: “How’s business this year compared with last year?” Or, “How is your business compared with others in your industry?”

  Vendors

  Ordinary: “What do you like about your current vendor?”

  Comparison: “Describe for me the ideal qualities you look for in a vendor relationship and how that compares with your current situation.” Or, “Can you prioritize what’s most important to you in a vendor relationship: on-time delivery, low prices, or a wide selection?”

  Similar to the benefits of expansion questions, comparison questions reveal more and prompt the prospect to do the talking. Rather than asking a question that will give you a stale answer (such as, “What’s your budget?”), a comparison question actively engages the prospective customer and ensures that her answer comes with information you can use (for example, “How does this year’s budget compare to last year’s?”—which can open up a discussion about why the budget has or hasn’t changed).

  Comparison questions can also be particularly useful to home in on important buying criteria for the prospective customer. When asked whether price is important, an overwhelming majority of people will say yes. However, when asked to rank price, quality, and service, prospective customers will be forced to evaluate their priorities and verbalize what they feel most passionate about.

  In the last chapter, we set out a scenario where a salesperson—Mark—used expansion questions to discover new insights about his prospect, National Trucking Company. Now let’s return to Mark and see how he can build on these insights by using comparison questions.

  After his first meeting with Lisa, Mark knew that this company would be a complicated sale because of the numerous personalities involved. When Lisa called him back to confirm their appointment with Vice President John Williams, Mark was prepared with some more questions about the company and its employees.

  Lisa: Mark, I’ve set up an appointment for you and me to meet with John Williams next Friday at nine. Will that work for you?

  Mark: It certainly will, and I thank you again, Lisa, for making that happen. So that we can get the most from this meeting, I want to ask you a few more questions about the company’s situation, if you have
the time.

  Lisa: Sure, that’s not a problem at all.

  Mark: Thanks. I want to know if you could explain to me, as the purchasing agent, what is important to you in selecting a vendor, and how does that compare with what is important to John?

  Lisa: I am always pressured to keep price low. Every quarter my region is evaluated against other regions throughout the country to see who is getting the best prices from vendors. Just last month my regional supervisor informed me that my division needs to reduce costs by 15 percent within the next twelve months. That is forcing us to choose the lowest price. But John has a different agenda. When we’ve been in meetings together, his focus is on increasing revenue.

  Mark: Okay, that is always a tricky situation to be in because people feel as if they are being pulled in two different directions. So what would you say is most important to your company—to cut costs or to increase revenue?

  Lisa: Good question. We need to focus on increasing business. Personally, I think everyone has become too focused on cost reductions, because that’s seen as easier than growing revenue. Yes, it can be a quick fix, but business is about making a profit. Without a profit the company cannot survive, so that’s where our main focus should be.

  Mark: Thanks, Lisa. One more question. Could you describe for me what you like about your current system versus what you do not like?

  Lisa: Well, the main issues I have with our current system have to do with delays. Right now, things can get backed up pretty easily and there’s no mechanism to override the system and get everything out on time. These delays cost me money, and I have to stay late in order to make sure that everything is completed. Our current system saves us time when there are no complications, but otherwise it’s a hassle.

  Mark: Lisa, thanks so much for your time and all of your input. I look forward to our meeting with John Williams on Friday at nine.

  Post-Game Analysis: Mark skillfully used comparison questions throughout this second conversation with Lisa to find out information about the company, the current system, and the personalities he would be dealing with in this sale. He can now go into the Friday meeting confident that he has a leg up on the competition because of his knowledge of the prospective customer’s business, as well as the issues most pressing in the minds of Lisa and John. Lisa’s willingness to share such vital information with Mark also demonstrates her desire to be an advocate and ensure that this sale will go through.

  It’s Friday morning, and Mark sits down in a boardroom with Lisa, his sales contact, and John Williams, vice president of National Trucking Corporation. After the requisite pleasantries, the three get down to business:

  John: Mark, you come highly recommended by Lisa, so I am ready to hear what you have to say.

  Mark: John, we’ve done a lot of work in your industry and have great results that I would like to share with you. So that I can zero in on what is most important to you, however, I would like to ask you a few questions first.

  John: Fire away!

  Mark: It would be very helpful if you could share with me your long-term goals and how they compare with where you were twelve months ago. (Comparison question)

  John: My long-term goal is for this company to become the premier trucking company on the East Coast. In order to do that, we need to ensure that once a customer does business with our company, he will want to come back time and time again. Nationally, our market share has suffered because some of our competitors have been slashing their prices in order to drum up business. We are not interested in being the cheapest; however, we are interested in being the best. Twelve months ago we were relatively unknown throughout much of the Southeast, but now, thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign, we have increased our market share by three points in that region. Now we need to replicate that success nationally, while maintaining the quality we have always given our customers.

  Mark: Can you walk me through the steps you are taking to make sure that your quality standards are being met? (Expansion question)

  John: Unfortunately, we have done a poor job at taking steps to reach that goal—especially as we expand—and my concern is that we will pay the price for not planning ahead. But Lisa assures me that you will be able to help us in that area.

  Mark: Well, that’s right. Lisa and I talked about the problems she has been having with delays. . . .

  Post-Game Analysis: Mark was able to adapt both expansion and comparison questions for this situation. He got the customer talking and positioned himself as a solution provider—someone who could help the company achieve its short- and long-term goals. All of the preparation and meetings with Lisa seem to have paid off for him.

  By now you may be thinking that the key to successful sales is simply to go directly to the top: After all, the man or woman at the top is going to be the one making the final decision, right? Not necessarily. Every company is different and each person within a company holds a different portion of power. In the example of the trucking company, the vice president may have been the person to give the final go-ahead for a new contract, but the purchasing agent decides who gets the opportunity to pitch new ideas. Everyone has a role to play and your job is to understand those roles. Once you do, you can leverage the relationships and your inside information to create new business opportunities.

  This is when you should remember the different influences on your prospective customer’s decisions and that those influences certainly translate into both fears and motivations. While the purchasing agent felt the most pressure from her regional supervisor, the vice president was dealing with considerations about his career, as well as how his company fares against the competition. The purchasing agent’s goals were more shortsighted than the vice president’s because she was evaluated every quarter and the only measure being used was her ability to keep costs low. On the other hand, the vice president was viewed by the company’s board of directors as a visionary—someone who would bring the company into the future. Obviously, this would not happen overnight, so he felt more flexibility when making decisions that might not show results immediately.

  Understanding these differences is vital if you want to effectively communicate and ultimately do business with both of these people. Expansion questions and comparison questions allow you to probe these relationships and personalities better than ordinary sales questions would. Mark, our salesperson in the trucking example, would never have been privy to so much inside information had he not used comparison and expansion questions to engage the prospective customer and encourage her and her supervisor to do most of the talking.

  Exercise 2

  1. Write a comparison question that will help you uncover one of the influences affecting your prospective customer.

  2. Write a comparison question that will shed light on how the prospective customer’s company conducts its business.

  3. Write a comparison question that addresses one of the following topics: competitors, current vendors, or current product usage.

  You have learned the importance of asking good questions and engaging customers in the sales process. In this chapter, you were given two relatively simple tools to get the customer to open up and share information with you. The following chapters will provide more tools and more sophisticated questioning techniques. Remember, once you learn the basics of formulating these questions, you can adapt them to fit any sales situation.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Vision Questions:

  Understanding Your Buyer’s Hopes, Dreams, and Desires

  AFTER TAKING A customer through a series of impact and lock-on questions, you will have someone in front of you who will want desperately to make a change. Vision questions enable you to show the customer a bright future, to present him with a picture of what could be if he did business with you. Whereas impact questions were all about emphasizing the negative effects of a customer’s current situation, vision questions focus on the positive results that can be achieved.

  At first,
asking abstract questions concerning your customer’s future might seem strange to you. Most salespeople are much more comfortable asking questions about the present than about the past or future. The positive effects of vision questions, however, cannot be denied. When your customer can envision a future without her current problems, a future that might include, for example, a raise, recognition, or just a life with one less problem in it, she will be your most ardent supporter.

  Just like impact questions, vision questions often work best in a series, beginning with the effects a change in vendor or service provider will have on the company and then progressing to a more personal view.

  These questions are very powerful because they tap into your customer’s needs and desires for the future. Vision questions get people to articulate their emotions: This is what motivates people to take action. Your customers have hopes and dreams just as you do. Your job is to help them reach those dreams, which begins by getting them to articulate their goals and then mapping out the path that will take them there. The path, of course, leads through your product or service. The key is to get your customer to articulate the path, instead of jumping in and pitching the solution yourself.

  The Power of “If”