Universal Truth #7: When we ask the right questions, we uncover what matters most. “Discovery questions” uncover customers’ needs, direct their thinking down a path we choose, generate curiosity, and ultimately move them to action. These questions build rapport, gain commitment, and help your prospects sell themselves. Well-crafted questions help us make a point loudly, without having to raise our voice. Good questions create change. Great questions can change the world.
I was fascinated with the New York Times article, “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love” which references Mandy Len Catron’s Modern Love essay, “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This.”
The idea is that 36 well-crafted, thought-provoking, emotional questions can cause you to fall in love with anyone. The questions are divided into three sections—each one more probing than the last. The thought is that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. To quote the study’s authors, “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure. Allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another person can be exceedingly difficult, so this exercise forces the issue.”1
I was intrigued, so I decided to try it with my husband. After just 10 questions, we felt closer—more connected and happier. You can find the full list of questions at www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html, but here are a few:
Admittedly, I never tried this experiment with my hairdresser or a perfect stranger in an airplane. It was set up for those who already have an affinity for each other. But it still got me thinking: Why do questions help us build a heartfelt connection? And if 36 well-crafted questions can induce love, can 36 properly positioned questions lead to a sale?
Absolutely. Ask the right questions at the right time in the right way and the answers you receive will set you up for long-term success. This kind of methodological questioning, first proposed by Socrates some 2,400 years ago in classical Athens, has helped people and organizations clarify intentions, expand their thinking, and help opposing parties reach agreement ever since.
The great motivator Tony Robbins says that the human brain is a question-answering machine.2 Ask lousy questions and you’ll get lousy results. Ask better questions, you’ll get better answers. The questions we ask our customers will dictate how they think about our products, about us, and about whether to buy right now.
This chapter is about knowing what questions to ask to uncover customer needs, to enjoy richer and more rewarding relationships, and to make more sales faster.
Specifically, questions do several things. They:
Corey sells new homes for Strident Development Group. For the last 26 years, she has maintained the number-two or -three position in the company. Lately, however, she can’t seem to make a sale.
Corey is confused. The developer just acquired fabulous new inventory. It seems like a perfect match for her customers. Finally, she can sell four-bedroom homes, not just studios. Not only that, the new development features a complete health club facility, day care, and an on-site restaurant. Corey believes in her product so much that she bought one for herself! So why won’t her customers buy?
Corey suspects the customers probably prefer the west side of town, and that the maintenance fees for her new inventory are too high.
The truth is that Corey’s lack of sales has nothing to do with her customers and everything to do with her.
I asked Corey and the rest of the team a few questions (how appropriate, right?), and the conversations revealed an unusual clue. Since their new product came on the scene, the sales team had consistently cut their presentation time nearly in half. As I dug deeper, it became apparent that nearly all of the seasoned sales force had reduced their presentation time by 38 percent.
Why?
It turned out that in their excitement to offer solutions, they had either shortened or eliminated their discovery step completely.
Neil Rackham, author of Spin Selling, uncovered the reason behind this phenomenon in his study of young Xerox salesmen. At Xerox, new salespeople hit the ground running—they were incredibly successful right out of the gates. Then, like clockwork, after 18 months, new reps crashed and burned.
What was Rackham’s conclusion? Once sellers had become so-called experts, they started anticipating customer objections and offering generic solutions. Moreover, they were so excited about their offering that they stopped listening and started selling before uncovering individual buyer needs.4 I see this happen all the time. New reps in their innocence and enthusiasm sell like crazy. Then, several months later, they get smart. They give too much information, overcome objections that weren’t there in the first place, and ultimately lose the sale.
In his webinar “Why Salespeople Fail,” Mike Bosworth (who worked with Rackham), created a term for this. He calls it “Premature Elaboration.”5 Are you a victim of Premature Elaboration Syndrome?
Many salespeople, like Corey, get so excited about their product that they assume everyone else will share their enthusiasm. They forget to ask the questions that will reveal their customers’ true feelings. Eager to show their smarts and get the deal, they miss unique buying motives and signals.
Asking good questions in your discovery—and throughout the sales process—not only helps you uncover buyer needs, it helps you tailor the rest of your sales presentation to those needs.
Yesterday’s salespeople merely needed to provide information. But today, buyers can find all the information they need online. So today’s salespeople need to interpret that information, ask questions, and then spark an emotional need for their product. Few salespeople show the customer how they’ll feel as a result of using their product or service, yet this emotional bond marks the difference between those salespeople, leaders, and companies that inspire, and those whose careers prematurely expire.
We can’t make this emotional connection with random questions. In fact, asking the wrong questions at the wrong time can alienate your customers. You may have heard that there’s no such thing as a stupid question? There are tons of stupid questions. Salespeople are notorious for asking irrelevant and unnecessary questions.
You will make far more sales by asking a series of targeted, thoughtful, and empathetic questions in your discovery than delivering a perfectly practiced presentation.
Jot down all of the questions you ask or think you should ask during this step of your sales process.
I find if you commit these questions to writing, you can’t succumb to a psychological principle called hindsight bias. Hindsight bias occurs when we feel that we knew something all along. At my live seminars, if I lay out what questions to ask, salespeople often feel as though they’re already asking them. However, when they commit their questions to writing first, they are often surprised at how many questions they’re missing—and why it’s costing them valuable sales.
Hold onto your list. You’ll need it in a moment.
Can you imagine driving from one end of the country to the other without directions? You may eventually get to your destination, but without a map or GPS, you’ll take far longer than necessary.
Your customers may not be as flexible. When your presentation is too long or off-point due to a lack of precision, your customers, to continue the analogy, may simply run out of gas. Your customers today are busy. They’re overwhelmed. Side-road conversations that aren’t relevant to them are simply an annoyance. You’ve got to keep them speeding down the interstate, not getting lost on side roads.
Your job is to ask questions so that you can provide solutions that are specific to their needs—the WIFM, or “What’s in it for me?” Your questions must follow a logical order. In other words, you start by gathering facts, and then progress to deeper questions that uncover customers’ problems and emotional motivators.
In the following section, I’ll explain how to use my Third-Level selling methodology to craft a discovery that helps you uncover what I call the “Big Four.” These are:
What follows is the map you’ll need for asking the right questions.
Years ago, when I first started selling vacation ownership, I created levels of questions that helped me uncover my customers’ emotional motivators. I called this methodology Third-Level selling. I began to help other salespeople in my office use Third-Level questions to connect with customers: I had discovered my niche.
I started to realize that if I could do this for individuals, I could do it for teams, and if I could do it for teams, I could help companies grow their revenues and transform their cultures.
This technique helps us get to the heart of the real reasons customers buy. The idea is to start with the facts and build up to those deeper questions so we can uncover buyer motivations:
Here’s an example of Third-Level selling in action:
Salesperson’s first-level (fact) question: Do you currently have a life insurance policy?
Prospect: No. We’ve never really felt the need for one.
[Is this answer enough for you to get the sale? It’s probably not. Follow up with a bridging second-level question.]
Salesperson’s second-level (fact-feeling) question: Are you thinking it might be a good idea now?
Prospect: Maybe. We have two young kids now.
[We’re getting closer.]
Salesperson’s Third-Level (emotional connection) question: Why would having a policy be important?
Prospect (thinks for a moment): If anything were to happen to me, my wife would have to go to work and the children would be left alone during the day. I couldn’t put my family through that type of stress.
Salesperson: So having a policy in place would give you a great deal more security?
Prospect: Yeah, if it were affordable.
Bingo! What was the customer’s Third-Level reason for purchasing? It was for security and family. The more emotional the response, the more urgency you will create.
Businesses have a responsibility for their bottom line. They want to know how your solution will affect revenue, decrease turnover, and enhance customer satisfaction.
But remember: Individuals run organizations. They, too, have underlying emotional motivators that drive their decision-making—whether it’s looking good to the boss, relieving stress, or building a more fulfilling work environment. People, not institutions, make decisions.
With that in mind, remember that when selling to businesses, these motivators may be hidden under the surface. It’s your job to uncover them and show how they’re connected to metrics like revenue, retention, and reputation.
Here’s an example of Third-Level selling in a business-to-business (B2B) context:
Salesperson’s first-level (fact) question: How long is your current contract with your copier supplier?
Prospect: Oh, we’re in it for another 12–18 months, I believe.
Salesperson’s second-level (fact-feeling) question: Are you happy with your service?
Prospect: It seems fine.
[At this point, the novice salesperson would jump straight to price savings. But the Third-Level seller was really listening.]
Salesperson: You say “seems fine.” If you could change anything, what would it be?
Prospect: Well, we have to physically take the copiers across town for servicing.
Salesperson’s Third-Level (emotional connection) question: How does that affect you personally?
Prospect (thinks for a moment): The employees hate having to leave the store for half a day and the customers often have to wait for their product. It slows down production.
Salesperson: What does the downtime cost you?
Prospect: It’s hard to say, but it’s not ideal.
Salesperson: So, in addition to saving you money on downtime, having on-site servicing would improve morale and customer service?
Prospect: Yeah, I guess so.
Salesperson: What a significant contribution that would be in your first year!
Prospect: How much is it?
When it comes to selling, the heart always comes before the head. If you’re on a team that inspires you, or you’ve followed a boss who’s motivated you, you know that that leader didn’t merely tell you how to do something; she inspired you to do it. It came from within. You were emotional about your commitment. So whether you’re selling dance lessons, real estate, software, or life insurance, people buy on emotion and justify their decisions with logic after the fact.
To refresh your memory, here are the seven key emotional drivers for all human behavior that we distinguished in Chapter 2. This time, I’ve also included the fear associated with the absence of each motivator.
When it comes to motivation, all decisions are an attempt to move toward pleasure or away from pain.6 But remember that the urge to avoid immediate pain is more stirring than our desire for pleasure. Wile E. Coyote, in the Roadrunner cartoons, moved more slowly to find food than he did to avoid the anvil dropping on his head.
Hope for gain Fear of loss
Safety
Adventure
Significance
Relationships
Health and wellness
Sense of purpose
Growth and education
Fear of loss
Death
Boredom
Insignificance, no legacy
Loneliness
Sickness
Confusion, despair
Ignorance
Here’s the fun part: Remember when I asked you to write down the questions you typically ask in your discovery? Take a look at your list. Knowing that people buy for Third-Level or emotional reasons, ask yourself, “Am I asking enough Third-Level questions?” Are you asking any?
If customers are buying for the Third-Level reasons, why aren’t you asking Third-Level questions?
If you’ve discovered that you weren’t asking enough Third-Level questions, you’re not alone. Most salespeople don’t. For example, Justin is in charge of the enterprise sales division for a major retailer selling franchises to entrepreneurs around the globe at $200,000 a pop. His company—let’s call it “SunnyFish”—retains a large share of the profits.
Justin is charming, charismatic, and full of energy. He told me sales were good, but could be better.
“Show me your discovery questions,” I asked.
He was quiet.
“Well I don’t really have any written down,” he admitted. “I go with my gut.”
We did a little role-playing, and as it turns out, the majority of his questions were first level:
“Okay,” I said. “Those questions are great qualifying questions, but they’ll do nothing to get your customers to want to buy a franchise. You need to find out what makes them tick. Well-crafted Third-Level questions create a need for your product that was never there in the first place.”
At first, Justin seemed puzzled. But he seemed open to my suggestion, so I went on and explained the three levels of questions to him. Together, we crafted a list of Third-Level questions:
What happened next was nothing short of miraculous. Potential customers were no longer just methodically going through the motions and responding to qualifying questions. Justin’s questions opened their hearts to new possibilities. The questions themselves stirred something deep inside of them and moved them to action.
“There is no shortcut to winning sales,” I told Justin. “You must prepare the tough questions and practice them in advance.”
The secret to getting level three responses is to tread slowly at first. Ask fact-finding first-level questions before moving to the more useful Third-Level questions. You know you’re moving to the Third Level when the response you hear hits one of the seven key motivators—or their associated fears. You know you’ve gotten here when you can feel a demonstrable shift in the emotional state of your customer.
Justin phoned me the next month. Sales are up by 42 percent!
Top performers ask questions that are so precise they prompt customers to view their businesses or their lives differently.
Let’s say they answer a one—or even a four. Many salespeople give up at this point. They figure their customers aren’t that interested. They miss the whole point. Well-crafted Third-Level questions reveal interest when there appears at first blush to be none.
Savvy salespeople follow up this response with the question, “What’s a 10?” When you sell with heart, you uncover your customers’ core motivators and link your product to them. This is what results in true urgency.
1. Get the facts about your customer’s current situation with first- and second-level questions.
Goal: Ask questions that reveal the customer’s current situation or the status quo.
You get the picture.
Second-level questions are a follow-up to your first question. They acknowledge the facts that your customer has just shared. Most importantly, second-level questions act as a bridge to the more powerful Third-Level questions.
2. Discover dominant buying motives with Third-Level questions.
Goal: Ask questions that reveal the emotional or Third-Level reasons they’ll buy—their hopes and fears.
3. Find the problem and dig deep to determine the implications of the problem.
Goal: Find a problem that your product will solve. But don’t stop there—make customers understand the deeper implications of that problem.
Common problems your questions are likely to unearth:
The following questions can help you uncover these problems:
Of course, finding a problem isn’t always enough to move the customer from the status quo. You also need to reveal the larger implications of that problem. You want to make it clear the implications of the problem are so tangible that she’ll pay any price to make it go away, if that is indeed the case.
For example, just the other day, a faucet was leaking in the master bathroom in our home. I was busy and wanted to ignore it. But my husband pointed out that if we didn’t call a plumber, we risked ruining our wood floors. What was the impact of this problem? Oh, about $10,000. I phoned the plumber and happily paid him the $650 to fix the faucet. It wasn’t enough for me to know there was a problem; I had to see clearly the consequences of failing to solve it. The more severe and costly the problem, the more urgently your customer will want to solve it.
One of my favorite slogans is “Sooner or later, you’ll break down and call AAA.” The implication is that the cost of an AAA membership is miniscule compared with the cost of being stuck on the side of the road with smoke pouring out of your engine and no one to call.
Similarly, Fram Oil Filter used to have ads that said, “You can pay me now or pay me later.” Again, it’s not just the problem that’s highlighted, it’s the cost of not solving the problem right now. Keep asking why the situation is a problem, why the prospect can’t solve it themselves, and what will happen if they don’t. More sales than you may think are lost when salespeople don’t internalize—and act on—this concept.
4. Uncover hidden objections or concerns.
Goal: Even your best customers will have some concerns holding them back from pulling the trigger. Ask questions to help you identify and address these hidden objections.
Our office gets more requests for seminars that deal with closing and handling objections than all of our other courses combined. What’s the problem? Overcoming objections at the back end isn’t nearly as productive as uncovering them at the front end. If you have a craving for fish tacos, I need to know that before I build a menu around bison burgers.
You know the expression “no questions, no objections, no sale”? It’s your job to uncover all possible objections and concerns before you ask for the order. You can get a “no” now or get one later. Best to get it now while you still have time to clarify it and overcome it. Discovery objections are usually pre-conceived objections. Newer objections may appear throughout the sales call and you must determine their validity and overcome them as they surface.
The following questions will help you better uncover objections:
How you ask is just as important as what you ask. Salespeople often memorize thought-provoking questions, but deliver them in an off-putting way. Buyers recoil when you go too deep, too fast. They resent it when you ask them to fill out a checklist of predetermined questions without taking a personal interest in each response. They feel manipulated when you fire back solutions before delving deeper into their feelings and problems.
Conversely, when you are generally curious and thoughtful—and even ask surprising questions—your prospects will respect you and connect with you. Periodically repeat back what you’ve heard, and your prospects will be amazed. I’ve actually had customers tell me, “This is the best product I’ve seen yet!” before I’d gotten around to showing them anything. I’d simply listened and repeated back what they told me they liked, didn’t like, and were pumped up about.
Because how you ask is just as important as what you ask, I’ve created a comprehensive list of action steps for crafting good questions in your discovery and beyond.
1. Move from the general to the specific.
I like to start my discovery with a very general question like, “Tell me about yourself and your company” or “Tell me about you and your training programs.”
Pay attention to whether they answer your question or tell you something else entirely. (They may tell you, “We’re just looking,” or, “We’re not happy with the service we get from your company,” for example.) Their response will clue you in to what’s foremost on their minds and in their hearts.
2. Let the customer finish her train of thought.
Have you heard the saying, “He who speaks first after a closing question loses”? Well, you have now! The same holds true during your discovery. Customers are more likely to be vulnerable when you give them some space. I find that salespeople often can’t stand the pressure of a moment of silence, so they rush to fill the void. Be curious enough to see what the customer says. What you think is “end of communication” may just be a long, thoughtful pause.
3. Compliment, don’t criticize.
Don’t put your customers on the defensive or they will react by shutting down. I often hear misguided salespeople insult their customers’ choices with comments like:
Last year, my family and I traveled to a fly fishing lodge in Alaska. A guest once said to Max, the owner, “You must have non-stop headaches, being responsible for this place,” and Max moved into full-on defense mode: “I get paid for fishing and flying a float plane. I love it!” Two days later, another guest said his dream was to own a fishing lodge, and Max confessed, “It’s nonstop, fixing the heaters, training the guides, and installing new gas pumps!” As a general rule, when you tell someone what’s wrong with a product choice or idea, they’ll tell you what’s right about it. When you compliment their choices, chances are better they’ll reveal the problems.
Too many salespeople hand their customer’s surveys and walk away, or send them discovery questions online. Your customer will give you more complete and in-depth answers when you stay with them through the discovery process. Every time I’m asked to fill out a survey at the doctor’s office, I give the shortest possible answers and skip what I can get away with. Your customers are no different.
5. Flying on autopilot during your discovery is not an option.
Write out all of your questions to ensure that each question is intentional and yields one of the Big Four types of answers I described earlier in this chapter. If you already have prescribed discovery questions, make sure each question fits into one of the four categories.
6. Get the rest of the story.
In Chapter 5, I offered techniques to build rapport when you seemingly share little in common. Follow-up questions in the discovery step not only build greater rapport, they also unlock critical information.
Ask questions, listen to the answers, and use the answers to ask the next meaningful question. Prospects will generally answer the questions you ask them, no more and no less.
When you ask a question, dig deeper and ask follow-up questions to get the rest of the story. I love to illustrate this point in seminars with a clip from the movie The Return of the Pink Panther.
The scene begins with Inspector Clouseau checking into a German hotel. He sees a small dog sitting next to the hotelier, and as he reaches down to pet it, asks, “Does your dog bite?”
The hotelier answers, “No.”
Clouseau proceeds to pat the small dog’s head until the dog snaps and ferociously bites him.
“I thought you said your dog didn’t bite!” Clouseau cries.
The hotelier replies: “That is not my dog.”
Now that you’ve uncovered the Big Four, what do you do with that information? Well, for starters, we need to make certain that the information we received is in fact what our customer meant to tell us. Top performers not only uncover essential information, they confirm it.
Uncovering and confirming your customer’s life priorities and challenges is a start. But you can’t change someone’s priorities with a dynamic sales presentation. You can’t make your technology or your medicine or your car or your financial plan the most compelling thing in your customer’s life. What you can do is find out what your customer’s life priorities are and link your product to it.
This practice creates urgency—the need to buy right this minute. Wouldn’t you like your customers not just to buy, but to feel an urgent need to? How to get them to feel just that is the subject of the next chapter.