Going Deep In Sales Meetings – How To Get Closer With Your Future Customer
Contributed by Bill Choudhry, an outbound sales professional. His approach is non-salesy, consultative, and authentic. What he loves most about outreach is that. He loves the outdoors and can frequently be found in the park. He also likes playing guitar and is an avid sci-fi junkie.
Everyone knows that in order to get further in dating and relationships you need to start getting to know the person better.
Well, same thing for sales! And how do you start getting intimate? You go deep and that’s what we are going to talk about in this post.
When it comes to conversations, you can think of it in different levels. Conversations between people always start off at the surface level or small talk discussion. As you get to know a person better, you go into deeper and deeper levels of conversation and they start opening up to you. This is where you start to know more about their feelings and motivations behind why they do certain things.
It is not easy to get a stranger to open up to you so much when it’s your first time talking to them. That is why you can use something called guided questioning. When you want to steer the conversation in the direction you want, you use this type of questioning. You are directing the conversation where you want it to go but without forcing anything at all. I used this when I was a teacher to get the answers I wanted out of students.
When the prospect shares their experience about something, you will be asking why, how and similar questions to get them to elaborate more on their thoughts. In this post, I will show examples of guided questioning that you can use.
In this post, I will talk about how to move from surface level talk to deeper talk. You will be moving from “what?” “who?” and “when?” questions to why and how questions.
This article is broken down into three parts:
- Surface level questions
- Second level questions
- Third level questions
Each level of questions allows you to get deeper and deeper in your conversations with prospects and get to know them more intimately. These questions are geared mostly towards small business owners but the leveled questions concept applies to prospects in any sort of business, big or small.
Surface level sales questions
You usually start with surface-level questions, like when we network at an event, and then keep getting more and more intimate from there. This is where you start with small talk then you get to know about their business a little more.
Surface questions often answer the questions “what?” “who?” and “when?” in general terms.
Here you start to know basic information about their company by asking questions like this:
- Who is your ideal client?
- How do they find you? Or how do you find them?
- What’s the problem they’re facing that motivates them to buy from you?
- What makes you different from everybody else?
These types of questions get you a basic understanding of their business.
Now you have a general understanding of their business. You might know some of these things but the point is to hear these things from the prospect’s mouth. The reason for that is because you will use the prospect’s own words to counter their objections later on.
Next you will start talking about pain and goals.
Second Level Sales Questions-Processes, Pains and Goals
In second level sales questions, you start talking about their processes, pain and goals. You get them to go deeper, you will be asking why, how and other questions to have them elaborate what they mean. You are `moving from surface level feedback to talking about feelings. It gets them to elaborate and it lets you probe deeper.
Talking about Goals
Examples of questions you can use:
- What are your most important goals for next year?
- That sounds like it is very important to you. May I ask why?
- You mentioned that you want ______ results. What do you think is keeping you from getting those results on your own? What’s stopping you from getting there in the next 2 months?
Talking about Current Processes
Example questions you can use:
- What does your current process look like for _____, whenever you do______?
- Why isn’t your current solution and/or process working for you? How does that make you feel?
- What else have you done to get better results from your ______? (other programs, partners, paid ads, etc)?
- How long have you tried?
Talking about Pain
Example questions you can use:
- What is the biggest challenge with ____ you’re currently facing? Can you elaborate?
- You mentioned your frustration around ______. How does that make you feel?
- What have you already done to address this pain? Can you provide an example? Why do you think it didn’t work?
- So you mentioned your current pain with ________. How can it be fixed?
- What happens if this problem goes unresolved?
*When they start telling you about their pain, you will be taking notes and using this as ammunition to counter objections.
Third level sales questions
So when you are ready to go even deeper, you can start getting them to envision using your product in their business. Here you get them to think about the consequences of choosing or not choosing to work with you and their motivations.
Talk about the consequences of choosing or not choosing to work with you
Examples of questions you can use:
- If the problem you have described is not fixed, how will it impact your business/life?
- If we could give _______ result as we have discussed, how would that impact your business/life?
Talk about motivations
Example of questions you can use:
- You mentioned that you want to hit this revenue number ________?
- What’s the driving force behind that number? (what’s your motivation for wanting to that amount)
- Let’s say your business DOES make that amount, consistently…what would change in your life?
Wrapping Up
Prospects are like the ocean, you need to dive deeper and deeper in order to find out what they really want. It’s all about asking the right questions in the right order. By embracing this structure of leveled questions, you’ll better understand your prospects and close more deals.