Questioning Strategies to Help You Close the Sale

By Sandler Systems, Inc.

How to uncover the emotional gap between where your prospect is right now … and where he or she really wants to be.

Are you a salesperson who has been hearing too many “We’ll think it over,” “Get back to me,” and “We’ll let you know” responses? If so, you’re in good company.

The key to closing more sales is uncovering pain – that is, uncovering a level of emotional discomfort on the prospect’s part that’s sufficient to inspire action to change what isn’t working. Notice that you’re not creating this discomfort. You’re shining a spotlight on something that already exists.

In the following two-part series, we will examine questioning techniques that will help you uncover the emotional gap between where your prospect is right now … and where he or she really wants to be.

Reversing
Reversing is an extremely simple and effective way to uncover a prospect’s pain. It’s simply answering a question with a question … with a purpose. Your goal in reversing is to dig deeper, toward the root of the prospect’s pain. Reversing helps you find out if prospects actually have pain or not!

Let’s look at an example in a selling situation so you can see how it works. Assume you’re a contractor selling residential roofing to long-time homeowner Jasmine Washington. Jasmine says to you, “Can you tell me a little bit about the roofing products that you would recommend for my house?” Most roofing salespeople would instantly jump at this opportunity to list all the products that they offer – what colors are available, how long material lasts, and so on and so forth.

We recommend that you do not do that. Instead of listing features and benefits, we recommend you respond to Jasmine’s question with something like, “That’s a very good question. We offer a wide variety of roofing products, and it would probably take me four hours to go over all of it. Can you be a little bit more specific as to what you might be looking for?”

In response, Jasmine says, “Well, we’ve had the house re-roofed three times over the past 25 years. Every single time, it didn’t last as long as they said it would.”

Would you be tempted to explain why your company is different? We recommend that you don’t. Instead, answer her implied question with a question of your own – which is another reverse.

“Wow, I’m sorry that happened to you. Would you be kind enough to tell me a little bit more about that?”

After a couple rounds of reversing, Jasmine starts to share a story based on her personal experience. Her story involves water leakage into her home that damaged kitchen appliances as a result of the roof’s failure. She was forced to make an insurance claim and thought that was a big hassle. Now that she’s explained her circumstances, you dig for pain and start posing questions like, “How did that impact you?”

She says, “Well, that year we had offered to host Thanksgiving, and the leak ruined the stove and fridge just days before the holiday. So, it was a very annoying situation. I would have been so embarrassed if it didn’t get fixed. Not to mention my husband flipped out that we had to spend money we didn’t have for a new roof.”

Notice that in this scenario, several reverses were used to uncover how the prospect really felt about the difference between where she is right now and where she wants to be – her pain. It’s quite common for the salesperson to have to ask multiple questions in order to uncover the real pain of the situation. In fact, it typically takes three or more reverses before prospects reveal their pain!

Use the Pain-O-Meter
The Pain-O-Meter is a simple, powerful process that consists of four main questioning areas:

Surface-level problem
Impact on family/team
Personal impact
Emotional pain/buying zone

The first two levels of questioning focus on the pain indications, while the last two levels are the true emotional pains. As you can see in the illustration, there is a needle as if on a meter (like a speedometer). If a question you ask leads the prospect or customer to share a surface-level problem, then the needle is on the far left of the Pain-O-Meter: “First-Level pain.”

Examples of First-Level pains you can ask about include: prospects are getting late deliveries, no one picks up the phone when they call their suppliers, their computers are running slow, their investments are not performing well, or they have no college fund.

These problems touch on several different solutions, products, or services that might be needed. Good news? Well … maybe. At this point in the interaction with prospects, it is good to recognize that this person might need a solution that you can provide. But it is also important to understand that surface problems are not pains!

You are not ready to present anything. You still need to move the needle further to the right, if possible. If you try to present at this point, you’ll get trapped in the prospect’s system for buying things, and end up with a “let-me-think-over.” So be careful, and don’t get emotionally involved too soon.

In part two of the series, we’ll examine how to advance the needle to the “Second-level pain.”

Learn more about increasing sales and success with a proven, systematic approach to selling. Contact us at salestips@repertoiremag.com.

About Sandler

With over 250 local training centers around the globe, Sandler is the worldwide leader for sales, management, and customer service training. We help individuals and teams from Fortune 500 companies to independent producers dramatically improve sales, while reducing operational and leadership friction.