6 Most Powerful Sales Questions To Help You Close More Deals
Life is all about sales. We started selling when we were a baby. All our parents needed was a peaceful evening, so we cried until obtaining what we want, we sold the peace after that. We sell plans. We sell ideas. We need to convince our group of friends to go where we want to go. These are all some kind of sales, it doesn’t need to be exchanged with the money always.
Are you good at sales? If you are, it’s probably because you’re good at asking questions. That’s because sales is all about understanding the needs of your customer and then finding a way to solve their problem. Asking the right questions is the best way to close more deals. But be careful — if you seem too salesy, you’ll turn your customer off.
Salespeople are the backbone of any successful business. They are the ones who interact with customers, build relationships, and drive sales. It is important for salespeople to be genuinely helpful to their clients. By taking the time to understand their needs and providing them with guidance, salespeople can build trust and create long-term relationships with their clients. When salespeople are focused on helping their clients, they are more likely to close deals and achieve their quotas. Furthermore, happy clients are the fuel of subscription-based businesses.
Communication is based on two verbs. Talking, and Listening. There is this misconception that to be a successful salesperson, you have to be a really good talker. It is true, but being a good listener is underrated. The truth is that listening is more important than talking. To listen, you need to leave a space for your potential customer, and to do that, you need to ask powerful questions. Powerful questions will guide the whole sales process, and help you understand the pain of your customer. You also need to learn their goals and motivations. With these 6 non-salesy questions, you will learn to be empathic as well, which will help your personal growth too, not just a good salesperson.
If you are selling online, you most probably jump from one discovery call to another. You can also check 10 Online Selling Tips if you are a beginner. It will help you to close more deals.
- Can we get started?
Talking about the weather and personal lives is good. Small talk breaks the ice. In this period of speaking, don’t forget to take notes about this person’s daily life. Later on, it will help to give you a reason for contacting with the aim of following up. For instance; if the prospect tells about his backache, next time you can contact him to provide some exercise method you just learned. This will let you build the relationship.
Asking to get started will help your potential customer to focus on what you are about to say. It is important to respect the time of that person, so the aim is to get started to talk about the business as quickly as possible. This is appropriate to ask in any situation like calling, e-meeting, or meeting.
Another benefit of this question is you already started to get a YES answer. It is crucial to ask questions that the prospect will agree with you. If you keep going on this track, it is most likely to get a YES when you are calling for action to close the deal.
2. What got you excited to get involved in this meeting?
This question is quite strong, an open-ended one. If you manage to get the person to the meeting, it means that there is a reason behind that. If he didn’t think about it earlier, you give space for him to think about it. He would only focus on the interesting part of this meeting.
The prospect is investing valuable time to speak with you. And you get him to repeat what got him interested in this call. Get your pencil back, because you are about to hear the real motivation. You can use this motivation during the sales closing journey of that client.
You will hear about his problem and see how he thinks you can solve his problem. In the case that you don’t know why he is in this meeting, you may not identify his real problem. You only have one job, solving problems. Just focus on this.
3. Since when do you have this issue?
As you see, we still didn’t pitch our best features. We are still trying to understand deeper. In the previous question, he mentioned the pain point. Now this question will let the prospect go even deeper.
Listening is the most important part. These kinds of questions will get your prospect to talk more and more. The more they talk, the more you understand their main pain point. From this moment, you can tailor your solution for their benefit.
If you know for how long they have had this problem, it gives you an insight into how urgent they need a solution. In case they could survive for a long time with this problem, you can show that now is the right time to start instead of postponing it again.
4. Where are you now? And where do you want to be?
The client can be on point A and he may want to be on point B. Then you should show her/him how can your service will take him across the bridge. Let’s say you are a mobile app reseller. Your client is having difficulties staying connected with their clients at point A. Your solution can carry them to point B which means having a business app and sending push notifications.
There is always a motion in the business. Your clients desire to head to a better spot. They always want to improve it in some way. If your product is a vehicle that will help your client to get their desired situation, it will be fair for them to purchase your product.
The answers to this question will give you a sense of the client’s goals. It is important to know their goals to figure out if your product or service fits to reach their goals. If your client is a professional, he most probably has OKRs (Objective Key Results). If you provide a service that will help them reach their objectives, they can get your service as a key result.
5. What stops you from reaching your goal on your own?
Most of the time, people don’t need to be taught but need to be reminded. This question will let them think about why they are still not on the desired spot. They will see that they couldn’t pass across the bridge by themselves. It shows that they need support.
Here the goal is to let your prospect feel he will have difficulty reaching his goals without your help. The roadblocks have to be removed with your product so clients can reach their goals. Wouldn’t you purchase a product that will take your business to a next level?
It is important to be genuinely helpful. Since you know the client’s goals, and if your product won’t help them to reach their goals, it is as important to convince them to not purchase your product. You will win this person forever with this attitude. You will be his thought leader.
6. What were you expecting I could do to assist you?
At this point, your prospect now has a clear idea of their current situation, what they desire to achieve, they won’t be able to make it without some kind of assistance. It has been a conversational call, not a sales pitching call so far. So the prospect naturally would ask for your help.
What can you do to help me achieve my goals? If you could get this question, it means that you earned the permission to actually pitch your service or product. In that phase, they will be listening to you more carefully and considering to purchasing your product seriously.
Instead of you hard selling, the potential customer is asking you for help. You controlled the entire call to get to this point. Being conversational is the key to building a relationship.
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To sum up, you need to listen to your prospects carefully, understand their main pain points, and prepare them to ask for your help to heal this pain. These questions are important to ask throughout your sales meeting. Discovery calls are important to any company. They are the first step to closing a deal. They are also the functions necessary for the ultimate success of the sales team. You can of course ask BANT questions to discover if you are talking with the right prospect. Add value to the discovery call and provide a way to help the buyer. The buyer may cool off after the discovery call, so follow up accordingly. But if you’ve successfully completed the steps above, the buyer is more likely to come back to you if you’ve made a positive impression on them. This leads you to close more sales.
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