As we discussed in The 3Ps of Selling article, developing a strong point-of-view requires you to ask specific leading questions. Developing these questions in advance will help you stay in the moment and facilitate an effective discovery.
After all, like you, your buyers want a better future — both professionally and personally. They connect emotionally to this better future. Unfortunately, there are often obstacles in their way.
GREAT SALES QUESTIONS
Effective sales questions enable you to pinpoint the buyer’s desired future, identify the issues or gaps preventing its achievement, and determine how your offerings will help them get where they want to go.
To develop these types of questions, you will need to create a list of those that enable an authentic and empathetic conversation with your prospects.
These sales questions will help you:
Provide unique insights into their business or industry
Help buyers look at their business and desired outcomes in a unique way
Communicate opportunities or risks that your buyers weren’t aware of prior to meeting with you
Earn the opportunity to showcase how you can enable that better future with products/services
While traditional sales questions help the seller qualify prospects, they aren’t as effective because they don’t add any value to the buyers. This dated interrogation approach continues to be one of the main reasons that buyers tend to try and avoid salespeople.
While it’s important to ask questions, it’s critical to prioritize them. If you get tactical too early, you will get commoditized. If you “beat around the bush” too long, your prospect will become disengaged. Therefore, you need to think about both the order and structure of your key sales questions.
ITF Structure for an Effective sales question exchange
Sales questions should include either a point-of-interest (POI) or a unique insight relevant for your prospect. The POI allows you to show your prospect that the discussion is about them and not you. This also makes it more appealing to them while differentiating you from other sellers. Similarly, it proves that you can add value to them. This encourages them to continue the conversation.
Here’s an example of a key question that an ITF sales team member asks our prospects (CEOs and sales leaders):
“We know that 39% of the time, a B2B purchasing decision favors the company that sells better as opposed to the company that has the better price, quality, or service features. How often does your sales team leverage your sales process to give you a clear-cut advantage beyond price, product or service features?”
Here’s a sample follow-up depending on their response:
“Please, tell me more about the impact of your approach on your company’s sales results last year.”
This example follows the ITF structure for three reasons:
Begins with an insight that should add value to the prospect (39% of the time)
Prompts the prospect’s consideration of a better future (they win business when not commoditized on price, quality, or service features)
Facilitates the identification of a problem that we can solve (e.g., they don't have a sales program or process that provides competitive differentiation in their market)
Here’s another example:
“I loved the video on your website referencing your company values of integrity, commitment, and fun! We share two of the same values at In The Funnel. I also see that you currently have 210 employees on LinkedIn. How do you compete and win in your market?”
Here’s the follow-up:
“How is your value proposition messaging resonating with clients and prospects? What grade would you give the sales team on consistent messaging of it?”
Our sales team does not immediately try to solve any issue for the prospect after their initial answer. We call that “spiking the ball too soon”. It signals the end of a play, just like in sports, which is a negative outcome in a sales conversation. Instead, our team simply gets the prospect to expand on their response with follow-up multiplier questions.
Your Prospects Want To Talk…Let Them
Sales question multipliers tend to reveal the prospect’s vision or the obstacles preventing their desired outcome(s). Clarifying and reinforcing both of these increase our chances of moving forward in our sales process. It also helps us link the prospect’s need(s) to something more meaningful and compelling to act on. This may seem self-evident, but it isn't.
Often, a great question will cause the prospect to prioritize the issue in real time or say it out loud for the first time. This reinforces the importance of a better future that we are discussing with them.
Our team often uses four multipliers, which are all intended to uncover an insight that we can leverage:
As the prospect discloses information about themselves and their desired future, the more successful the sales outcome. Incidentally, this is what they want to do if they believe we're credible. According to Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell, when people talk about themselves, the pleasure centers in their brains are activated. Therefore, prospects are likely to perceive these interactions positively — which can put the odds in your favor.
The Sales World’s Best Kept Secret
If you can add value, your best clients and prospects will want to engage with you. However, they will judge your capabilities and skills harshly — particularly in the early stages of your discussions. As a result, if you default to becoming a “talking brochure” or ask one-dimensional questions, your sales cycles will end or you will become commoditized.
Remember, your objective in every sales conversation is to add value.
You add value with great questions that identify your prospect’s needs and wants. Once you have a clear understanding of their desired future and the existing barriers they're facing, then (and only then) you should start to share your solution(s) as to how you can help.
Graphically, your questioning strategy looks like this:
This method allows you and your sales team to articulate value from your products/services because you understand three core elements: their current state, desired future state, and the obstructions blocking their progress. The value engineering sales process is successful when the perceived benefits of your solution far outweigh the prospect’s perceived costs, risks, and challenges of working with you.
REMEMBER “P.E.A.R”
To continually improve, you can refer to the acronym P.E.A.R. which stands for the following:
Plan
Execute
Assess results
Recalibrate as needed
Next Steps
Create the list of your favorite 10–15 sales questions
Document the obvious insight and follow-up question to each
Determine which questions you plan on asking at each stage of your demand generation process or sales process
Document the obvious insight and follow-up question to each (one of the “oldies but goodies” related to sales questions is Neil Tackham’s work: Spin Selling, McGraw-Hill, 1988