Selling is about satisfying customers needs. Unfortunately most customers and clients have no idea on what their exact needs are, so they solve their symptoms. To make a sale that satisfies a customer need and possibly even gains you repeat business and referrals, you must learn how to ask your customers the right questions.
If a customer comes to you wanting to buy a fire alarm because he thinks his house might burn down, offer him a consultation to find out how best to protect the house. From this, you can give the client the best advice after understanding their actual situation and probably sell them on more gadgets.
So, how to ask your customers the right questions;
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Ask questions that make the client realize the cost of inaction
The biggest killer of sales is procrastination by customers and clients. A customer knows exactly what to do and how to do it but they put it off for later and eventually forget. What you need to do is ask questions that demonstrate to the customer what would happen if what they fear happened before they got prepared. This helps to remind them why they needed the purchase in the first place.
If you sell home alarms and have just finished a presentation to a client who has decided to take some time to think about it, just ask
“If tonight there is break in to your shop and there is no alarm, how else will your security guards get alerted to the problem?”
and immediately follow with,
“Don’t you think you will fall asleep better, knowing you have an alarm to discourage buglers from targeting you?”
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Don’t ask yes or no questions
The whole point of asking a client a question is to dig up the real need they probably don’t know they have. To achieve this, you need questions that dig deep into the client’s understanding of the problem. The only way to achieve this level of detail is to ask the client questions that force them to think and come up with an answer. Yes or no questions do not provide this level of detail and should be avoided.
Yes or no questions are only good and quickly ending a conversation. Instead of asking
“Do you want this fire alarm?”
instead ask
“What kind of fire alarm would you like?”
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Ask Questions that get the client to engage you
Ask questions that force the customer to explain what they want, to you, and you can uncover dozens of other needs that you can also solve. You can also get to understand what they have already tried before and understand why it never worked, before prescribing a new solution.
“Is this the first time you are buying a fire alarm?”
“What has been your previous experience with fire alarms?”
These three techniques assist the client to understand their need better and why they are buying from you in the first place. They also assist you know how to ask your customers the right questions and avoid a bad reputation from unsatisfied customers and clients who ultimately blame you when their results are not as expected.
By incorporating all these techniques to your questions, it is easy to make your customers commit to buy from you, and even accelerate their buying decision time, by selling themselves to the necessity of your product through their own answers.
How to ask your customers the right questions is one of the most important skills for a sales person to learn. If done right you can get clients to buy without you having to do the sales.