Some inspiration from Mark Lack (link to shorten the gap.com) to help you close even more sales and serve more people with your products and services.
How do you get your prospects to “expand” their answers to bring out more emotion? You do that by asking “Expanded probing questions”. As you know prospects buy on emotion 100% of the time and justify it will logic.
Expanded Probing questions should begin with phrases like these:
Walk me through …
Tell me more …
Can you share with me …
Describe for me …
Explain to me …
These questions show your prospects that you are there for them, you want to hear their pain. You not only want to hear their pain, but you want them to hear their pain right? You want them to relive the experience of the pain they associate from not having the problem resolved yet.
So what is the most intense emotion? It’s PAIN! Without pain, there is no sale. Without you pulling out pain from the prospect with powerful questions your potential customers will continue living that pain, doing what they always have done, maintaining the status quo. Unless you learn to uncover a prospect’s pain with great questions, you will continue to sell using traditional selling techniques, playing the numbers game, losing sales you could be making.
Examples of Probing Questions:
Can you walk me through your company’s decision-making process?
Can you give me a specific example so I can understand this better?
Can you go over with me the qualities you look for when choosing a company to work with?
Walk me through the criteria you use to make a decision on something like this?
Describe for me what you’re possibly looking for just to see if I could help you.
Explain that to me in more detail just so I understand … And did that work?
How did you feel about that? In what way though?
Solution awareness questions can help the prospect become open about your competitors who are also marketing to your clients.
Once you learn more about how your competitors are and where your prospect is with each one, it will give you a competitive advantage in your sales process
Examples:
Could you share with me what you’re hoping to accomplish in the next 3mo/6mo/12mo? How does this compare with where you are right now?
Can you go over what qualities you are looking for in a vendor? How does that compare with what your CEO/boss/department heads look for in a vendor?
What differentiates your company from your competition? Why is that?
What is more important to your company cutting costs, or increasing sales and revenue? Why though?
Can you share with me your long-term goals and how they compare to where you are now? What’s prevented you from achieving them though?
What have you tried to do about this in the past? What worked? What didn’t?
How much do you think this has cost you? In what ways?
Have you given up trying to deal with this problem? Why is it important to deal with this now though?
Have you given up trying to solve this issue? Why though?
How long has this been going on in the organization?
How long has this been a problem?
What’s prevented you from solving this in the past? Why now though?
How much do you think it’s costing you in lost sales each year? How much do you think it’s costing you in lost revenue each year?
