The best way to open a sales interaction is to ask the prospect a series of questions about what he wants and needs. Right? Wrong! Not unless you want to come across like a drill sergeant.
There are certainly many important direct questions that every salesperson needs to ask. However, the beginning of a sales interaction is neither the time nor place to ask them. Top salespeople first concentrate on building trust and rapport with the customer. Then they use their probing and needs assessment questions to gather the information they use to close the sale.
Why do sales superstars not favor the use of heavy questioning techniques in the beginning of a sales interview? After all, don’t most books and tapes on salesmanship tell you that you are supposed to start the sale with needs assessment questions?
Top salespeople know that it does a salesperson no good to have information about a customer if that customer was alienated while the information was being gathered. It is far more important to open your sales interaction by building trust and rapport. If you do this well, the customer will then tell you everything you want to know. Starting your sales call with a string of probing questions certainly fails to build rapport.
Secondly, by avoiding the string of direct questions early in the sales interaction, the salesperson pleasantly surprises the customer. Many customers expect to be “screened” or “qualified” or grilled by salespeople. In fact, many customers anticipate this type of questioning with some fear. It is this type of questioning that gets people to think “Me-Customer!” and “You-Salesman!” which leads to “I am going to be on guard!” Questioning the customer early in the sales call triggers defensiveness.
Understanding Hypnotic Questioning Techniques
When a client goes to see a skilled hypnotist, the hypnotist does not ask, “Do you want to be hypnotized?” He or she assumes the client wants to experience hypnosis.
The hypnotist might start by using an embedded question such as, “Can you tell me about your childhood?” This is called an embedded question because of the imbedded command it contains, “. . . tell me about your childhood.” This section of the sentence is spoken with extra emphasis and thus comes across as a friendly, invisible command to talk about one’s childhood.
As the client talks about his or her childhood, the hypnotist may ask, “Did you have a nickname as a child?” or “What was your favorite game or pastime?” or “Who was your best friend?” As the client gets more and more into discussing his childhood, he begins to experience age regression, which was discussed earlier in the book. The client begins to relive and re-experience the emotions of childhood. Without even realizing it, the client is going into hypnosis.
The hypnotist deepens the trance by shifting to a discussion of other trance-like states the client has already experienced. For example, the hypnotist might ask hypnosis induction questions such as:
“Can you tell me what it feels like to fall into a deep sleep?”
“Have you ever experienced wonderful vivid daydreams? Tell me about that.”
If the subject has been hypnotized before, the therapist might say:
“Can you tell me about the deepest trance you have ever been in? What was that like?”
“Can you tell me about the ideal level of hypnotic trance you would like to experience?”
“Can you tell me about your favorite experience while in hypnosis?”
If the person has never been hypnotized, the hypnotist might use the following types of questions to begin inducing trance:
“Can you imagine what it would be like to go into hypnosis?”
“Can you pretend what it would be like to go into a trance?”
“Can you tell me about a time when you have been totally relaxed yet fully awake?”
As the client goes deeper into hypnosis, additional questions are asked:
“What is happening with your arms?”
“What is happening with your fingers?”
Instead of telling the client, “Your arms are getting heavy,” the Ericksonian hypnotist asks a question. No matter what the answer is, the hypnotist reply is something like, “That is exactly what you need to experience to go even deeper into hypnosis.”
Recently, one of the authors of this book was conducting a hypnosis session for a company president who was under great stress. When the deepening question, “What is happening to you fingers?” was asked, he replied, “They are tingling.” The author then said, “That tingling is exactly what you need to experience to drop deeply into hypnosis.” There was no way he could resist. His eyelids closed, his face and body relaxed, he dropped into a wonderful hypnotic trance, and we were able to help cure a sleeping disorder he had.
As the client talks about events in his or her life, or even events in the hypnotist’s office, the client might be asked:
“Did that take you by surprise?”
When someone is surprised, they are much more likely to be able to go into a hypnotic state. While in a state of surprise, the mind is fluid and is more open to change.
Another powerful hypnotic induction question to ask about almost any event in a person’s life is:
“Can you figure it out?” or
“Do you know what that means?”
If the client has to “figure it out,” it implies that there is something more than meets the eye. Properly used, it implies that there is perhaps something going on at another level, perhaps a subconscious level. The hypnotic question, “Do you know what that means?” induces mental doubt which helps to foster the hypnotic state.
An even more powerful version of the above hypnotic question is:
“Do you really understand what that means?”
Because it is so powerful, this question should only be used when a high degree of trust and rapport have been established. This question throws doubt on the conscious mind and on its ability to figure things out. Depending upon how it is pronounced, “Do you really understand what that means?” can be an indirect way of saying, “You don’t understand what that means.” When someone does not understand, they have much more reason to listen to you.
Skilled hypnotists have many other ways of using indirect questions to induce and deepen trance. As you will learn later in this chapter, questions can be used in every step in the hypnotic process. You will even see how hypnotic questions can be used to “read someone’s mind.”
How and When to Ask Hypnotic Sales Questions
When questions are properly used in the selling process, instead of feeling he is being grilled by a salesperson, your customer will feel he is being taken care of by a friend. Since you have first established rapport through pacing, your later questions will get much more truthful and detailed answers. Your questions are received by an eager “future customer” rather than by a defensive prospect.
Does this mean you can never ask direct questions? No. Quite the contrary! Interestingly, customers are far more receptive to direct questions from someone they like and trust. So, build the trust first to get permission to ask all the probing questions you want!
Asking detailed probing questions at the outset tends to create an atmosphere that puts the prospect on edge. Opening with a round of questions can be intimidating, threatening, and confusing for the prospect. The salesperson reminds the prospect of a drill sergeant! Think about it: do you want a total stranger to ask you all sorts of questions before you know that you can trust or believe that person? Most people need to trust someone before they will fully open up. This is a lesson we learn in both hypnosis and sales.
If you don’t have trust, you can ask all the questions you want, but you won’t get high-quality answers. We are am reminded of training sessions we held for stockbrokers in Los Angeles. As a part of this training, the stockbrokers are required to spend three hours per day “cold-calling” new prospects on the phone in an attempt to set up accounts. Another consulting group had been brought in to teach cold-calling. They taught the salespeople how to “qualify” the prospects to make sure they had the money to buy stocks and bonds. The salespeople had been previously taught that they shouldn’t “waste their time” on prospects who “didn’t have any money.”
These stockbrokers had been taught to ask probing questions up front to learn how much money the prospects had to invest. We were surprised to find that very, very few of the hundreds of people who were being called each day had any money to invest. In fact, most of the prospects being called were pleading poverty. Some claimed they were on the verge of bankruptcy!
What made this all so interesting is that we were working in Beverly Hills. We were calling hundreds of people each day in Beverly Hills and the equally wealthy suburb of Bel Air. Prospects were telling us that they were broke. We found this hard to believe, and decided to drive down some of the streets these people lived on (the stockbrokers were making cold calls from local telephone directories and addresses for many homes are listed). Some local real estate agents told us that homes on these streets averaged between $2 million and $3 million each. We noticed that the driveways were lined with Jaguars, Mercedes Benz, BMW’s, and even a few Rolls Royces. Yet the prospects were pleading poverty!
It didn’t take long to figure out that the prospects who were being called were not giving truthful information about their economic status. The probing sequence the brokers used was turning off prospects. Since there was no pacing and no trust-building, prospects would not give truthful information to the new stockbrokers. We worked with the company sales executives to craft an entirely new sales training program, and the executives decided to scrap the old probing sequence which obviously wasn’t working.
The office was soon bringing in dozens of new accounts each week. The only thing that had changed was that we were spending a couple of minutes on hypnotic pacing and trust building with each new prospect. The stockbrokers were selling the same products with the same commission structure they had always used. That didn’t change. We found that the trust-building combined with appropriate probes later in the call got more people to open up and give us high-quality information about their investment goals and how much money they had to invest.
Salespeople who use the heavy old-fashioned probing sequences sometimes wonder why prospects lie to them. The answer is that these salespeople trigger dishonesty in prospects by pushing too hard up-front. Some prospects and customers lie because they are afraid of the salesperson or because they don’t trust the salesperson. Asking questions without first having built trust is like setting fire to money. You are burning up your list of prospects.
Have you ever wondered why some prospects or customers don’t say much? What can we do to get a Silent Clam to open up? Many salespeople will just ask more and more questions. They push harder and harder on the “Silent Clam,” usually without much success. The approach used by superior salespeople, according to the research we have conducted at companies such as AT & T, Paine Webber, and Toshiba, is to first reassure the Silent Clam, make him or her comfortable, and build the basis for a friendship. When this is skillfully done, you frequently find the Silent Clam opens up all by himself!
The development of trust comes from using the pacing techniques described in previous chapters, and by showing the customer that you are like he is. Show the customer that he is safe with you, and he will be likely to truthfully answer your questions.
How to Phrase Direct Questions for a Direct Hit
There is a time and a place to use direct questions in your probing sequence. When are direct questions used by top salespeople? Just after trust has been established, and before a specific product or service has been suggested. You want to ask the direct questions before recommending a product so that you will know exactly the product to recommend.
Sales superstars also use direct questions when customer objections begin to surface. Objections are the friend and ally of salespeople because they reveal precisely what is stopping the prospect from buying.
Key Steps for Using the Questioning Strategies of the Sales Superstars
Let’s examine some of the sales questioning strategies used by top salespeople, and what makes these strategies so powerful. Early in the sales call, they will ask questions such as:
“What features and benefits are you most interested in?”
It is important to know the prospect’s thoughts and value systems before you begin your formal presentation. You may think you have the best product or service in the world, but if it doesn’t match your prospect’s value system, he or she won’t be very interested in hearing about it. For example, before presenting the idea for this book to our publisher, we asked what types of sales books they were most interested in. We were told the publisher was interested in a book that stood out from the crowded shelf of ordinary sales books. The publisher was not interested in another book on closing techniques to add to the hundreds of books already written on that subject. The publisher wanted a book on a sales subject that no other authors or consultants had ever written about. When we then proposed our book idea, we emphasized that no one had ever written a book on hypnotic sales techniques before. Our publisher found this, and our credentials in consulting with Fortune 500 companies, to be very interesting.
An excellent follow-up question is:
“What other products are you looking at in this area?”
When prospects and customers tell you what they are looking for in a product or service, you sometimes think you have the complete picture when you really don’t. Listen to what other products or services they are looking at in your area, and then think about the characteristics, features and benefits of those products or services. Such an examination may reveal product characteristics the customer is interested in which he or she did not mention previously. In some cases, the customer might not even be consciously aware of being interested in these features or benefits.
We were recently working with a home building company that was having difficulty selling some model homes. Prospects stated the features and benefits they were most interested in and this company’s new homes seemed to have all of these. However, when we asked what other homes they were looking at, several interesting findings emerged. We learned that these competitive homes had second fireplaces in the master bedrooms and that they had large gourmet kitchens. Many also had larger bathrooms. The development company used this information to make some modifications and additions on its next model homes, and sales started to take off. From that point on, all of the new homes had larger kitchens and bathrooms and second fireplaces in the master bedrooms. It turned out that the entire development sold out in only four months. This was because we gathered the information we needed to customize the homes to give buyers what they really wanted (which was different than what they first said they wanted!).
Another way of asking the question of “what other products are you looking at” is to ask:
“Who else are you talking to?”
This questioning technique works especially well with auditory people. Auditory people talk to themselves constantly and they store many of their thoughts in auditory form. You can think of these stored thoughts as similar to recorded sound-tracks. When you ask them who else they are talking to, they will not only tell you, they may repeat some conversations they have had with other salespeople in detail. You will thus be able to gain valuable information about your competition that will guide you in presenting particular features and benefits of your products and services.
Before asking for the order, many top salespeople ask a question like:
“Do you fully understand what makes our product so unique?”
This is a very powerful question. It contains the presupposition that your product is unique. Your prospect will start to think about its uniqueness. The word “fully” adds some extra power to the sentence. While a prospect may have some idea of what makes the product unique, it is doubtful that he or she “fully” understands the uniqueness. Whatever answer your prospect gives to this question, you win. If the prospect says he or she does fully understand, they have to explain in their own words what makes the product so unique. If they leave anything out, you can elaborate on other features and benefits.
If your prospect says that he or she does not know what makes it so unique, you also have an opportunity to fill them in on this point. Once the prospect understands the unique features and benefits your product or service offers, this question is an excellent follow-up probe:
“Is someone else involved in making this decision with you?”
Always assume that the person you are talking with is involved in making the decision. Don’t insult the prospect by saying anything like, “Who is the decision-maker in your household,” or “Who is the decision-maker in your company?” If the prospect is not the decision-maker, he or she will inform you of that fact. Until you are so informed, treat your prospect as if he or she is a decision-maker.
Here is a great probe for finding out your prospect’s level of urgency on making the purchase decision:
“Is there anything that prevents you from making a decision today?”
The answer will identify the barriers you must take down to get the sale. And—if you take down those barriers, you should get the sale because the prospect has implied that those were the only things that prevented him or her from making the purchase decision.
Occasionally in sales, you will encounter the “Silent Clam” type of prospect. They will tell you they want to “think about it.” How do you deal with prospects like this? What sales questions are most appropriate? Ask probes such as:
“Is it only a matter of the money?”
“Are you satisfied that we will be able to give you outstanding service?”
“Are you comfortable with our financing options?”
“Do we have the colors you want?”
“Is it the guarantee?”
You can go through the major objections or questions the prospect may have. These questions hypnotically plant a suggestion in the prospect’s mind. They work because some of the questions you raise will match the prospect’s thinking. When you hit the question which matches the question the prospect already had in his or her mind, you will get agreement. The prospect will say, “That’s right—I was thinking about that.” Then, all you have to do to get the sale is to satisfy the prospect on that issue.
Remember, if you don’t plant the question, the prospect may not raise it. Don’t assume that the “quiet” prospect doesn’t have any questions. That’s a dangerous assumption to make! Also, don’t assume the prospect is not interested! You may call this “uninterested” prospect next week and find he has purchased from another salesperson. He probably purchased from someone who was skilled in using questions to flush out his real objection.
Why do some prospects not ask all the questions they have? Sometimes it is due to embarrassment. They may be embarrassed to talk with you about the price. The price might be higher than they can afford, or than they think they can afford. When you raise the question first, you reduce the embarrassment factor. All they have to do is to simply agree that’s what they were thinking about. Then, you can show them how the purchase can be financed, or you can show a less expensive model and you can close the sale.
If a prospect looks puzzled or can’t make up his or her mind, ask:
“Is there something I neglected to fully explain to you?”
Here again, the key word is “fully.” Obviously, you didn’t explain everything fully to the prospect. That would take a long, long time. When you ask this question, you will flush out the prospect’s few remaining concerns. “Well,” the prospect might say, “you didn’t explain the extended warranty very well. And, I still don’t understand the financing options.” If you satisfy this prospect on the extended warranty and the financing, you will likely get the sale!
When you start your answer, preface it by saying, “Oh, I am sorry I didn’t give you all the details on that . . .” When you start off by saying you are sorry, you put yourself in the “one-down” position. The prospect may say, “Oh, that’s OK.” At minimum, he or she will not feel threatened by you. You are making yourself human and vulnerable. You come across much more as a friend than as a salesperson. Then, go on to say, “The details are really exciting . . .” You have now moved the prospect into a more expectant state of mind. He or she will expect to hear exciting details, and since we get what we think we are going to get, the prospect will probably find your answer quite interesting.
The information you collect from asking these types of sales questions will help you in customizing your sales messages, which ultimately leads to closing the sale. Since this type of information cannot always be gathered by observation, the direct questions need to be used.
Are we against the use of direct questions? Not at all! We insist that they be used—but, used at the proper time. Failure to use direct questions can actually place the salesperson at a distinct disadvantage when the time comes to close the sale. Direct questions help you to anticipate all the prospect’s objections. It is best to anticipate and disarm objections rather than to wait for the prospect to bring them up—and then to do battle.
Salespeople who don’t ask direct questions miss opportunities to deal with objections early on, when the objections are easiest to handle. Moreover, using direct questions communicates self-confidence on the part of the salesperson. It shows that you do not fear anything the customer might say.
It is not our purpose to advertise other books here, but we feel duty-bound to tell you about the best resource available on sales questions. Called The Sales Question Book, it is an organized collection of over 400 of the most powerful sales questions ever assembled. The Sales Question Book, which is bound in an indexed three-ring binder, is available through Personal Selling Power in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It is the only book we’ve ever seen that presents powerful specific questions for use in each step of the sales cycle. We recommend it here because many salespeople have told us that it has helped them close sales that brought in thousands of dollars in extra commissions.
How to Phrase Indirect Questions for a Direct Hit
We have found that as useful as direct questions are, indirect questions are even more powerful. Indirect questions help sales superstars gather the information they need without endangering trust and rapport, as “police detective” direct questions sometimes do.
Indirect questions come in a number of forms. In one form, the question can be phrased as a statement, such as “I don’t know what kind of income you have.” Upon hearing this type of sentence, a prospect will often tell you what his or her income is (even though you didn’t directly ask for it!). If you directly ask, “What is your income?” you risk having a prospect say, “That’s personal,” or “That’s none of your business.” The indirect question enables you to collect information about income and other highly personal matters, without endangering rapport.
Highly skilled hypnotists make frequent use of indirect questions which are disguised as statements:
“I don’t know how deeply you’d like to go into hypnosis.”
Upon hearing this “statement,” the patient will frequently respond by answering it as if it were a question. Also note that this indirect question contains the powerful hypnotic suggestion of “. . . you’d like to go into hypnosis.” When the hypnotist says this sentence, a special emphasis is given to the words, “. . . you’d like to go into hypnosis,” as the hypnotist looks deeply into the patient’s eyes. Using these types of techniques woven together many times, it is possible to induce a deep hypnotic state conversationally, without ever asking someone to close their eyes.
Why do indirect questions work so well? Prospects and customers rarely object to an indirect question, while objections to direct questions are actually quite common—particularly when those questions relate to information on salaries, savings, net worth, health concerns, or other personal matters.
Another way to use indirect questions is through the use of a pause, a raised eyebrow, an upturned hand, or some other questioning gesture at the end of a statement. This technique is often found at the end of sentences:
“This may not interest you . . . but we now offer a 12% interest rate.”
In this case, the indirect question is, “Does this interest you or not?” Typically, after hearing a “statement” like this, a prospect will answer by telling you just how interested he or she is. Here is another example:
“You probably already know about these special features . . . this laser printer prints 24 pages per minute with magazine quality graphics.”
The indirect question here is, “Do you know about these special features or not?” To make these indirect questions even more powerful, it is important that you pronounce them as questions. That is, raise your inflection and voice tone at the end of the sentence in a questioning manner. This almost guarantees the prospect will “hear” the statement as a question, and that he or she will answer it as a question.
You can also turn a statement, such as the above statements, into a question by raising your hands or by raising an eyebrow in a questioning way as you speak the sentence. This will help to trigger an “answer” from the prospect when he “sees” and hears what you are saying. This use of body language is an elegant way of adding some visual interest to what might otherwise be a simple verbal exchange.
The prospect hears your sentence and, upon seeing your questioning posture, automatically answers the question you never directly asked. This is what we call “sales artistry” and it is one of the skills that separates true sales professionals from average salespeople. The answer the prospect gives you will tell you just how interested he or she is in what you are discussing, and whether you should continue along the same path or switch to a new track in your sales strategy.
How to Get Positive Results from Negative Questions
When top salespeople do use direct questions early in the sales interaction, they tend to use what can be called negative questions. These special types of questions give the salesperson a gold mine of information on the customer’s self-image, self-concept, expectations and needs. This information is then used to custom tailor the rest of the presentation to close the sale.
One very successful life insurance salesman uses the following “negative” question:
“Why do you want life insurance?”
This is a surprising and a refreshing question to most prospects. They expect the life insurance agent to “push” life insurance. This successful agent doesn’t push at all. He asks the prospect to explain the prospect’s own interest. The prospect is then put in the position of having to sell himself or herself.
This “negative” question gains further power because the words are arranged to form a hypnotic presupposition of “. . . you want life insurance.” The salesman adds a special emphasis to these words as he speaks them.
What if the prospect says, “I don’t want life insurance”? The salesman follows up with another powerful sales question. He says, “You must have a reason for saying that. Do you mind if I ask what that reason is?” When he finds out “why” the prospect doesn’t want life insurance, he learns the objections he will have to deal with to get the sale.
A “negative” question used by a successful computer salesperson is:
“Does your business really need a computer that is this powerful?”
This question is effective because instead of “pushing a product,” the salesperson is soliciting the customer’s opinion. This “negative” question shows that the sales professional is more interested in learning about the customer’s needs than he is in forcing a product on the customer. The answer that the salesperson gets to this question reveals how the customer sees his business and what he perceives his computing needs to be. Frequently, this computer salesman’s customers will also answer by talking about growth plans they have for their businesses.
By asking questions that focus on the prospect’s self-concept and his concept of his business, the salesperson communicates “I care about you and your business.” Finding out how the prospect sees himself, and what he thinks he deserves and needs makes it easy to customize your sales presentation to push all his hot buttons.
In addition, the negative question gently puts the customer in the position of having to defend why he or she wants the product. In fact, these types of questions sometimes actually put the customer in the position of trying to convince the salesperson to sell him or her the product.
The use of negative questions may elicit surprise. After all, prospects typically expect the salesperson to “push” a product. This sudden “role reversal” is a refreshing change for the prospect. “Negative” questions can put the customer in the role of the salesperson and the salesperson in the role of the customer. It is a powerful way of making the prospect think of even more reasons why he wants and should buy your product. “Negative” questions are also effective because they ask for personal information which only the customer can provide. When the successful insurance salesman asks, “Why do you want life insurance?” only the prospect can talk about his needs and how insurance will address them.
Building an “Intuitive Link” with Your Customers through Mind-Reading Questions
Most people are uncomfortable dealing with strangers. Top salespeople handle this discomfort by giving the impression they know quite a bit about you, and that they understand you. One of the key ways they do this is with mind-reading questions and mind-reading statements.
When people feel that their needs, interests, and values are understood, an air of friendship, camaraderie, and trust is far more likely to develop. Sales superstars have the ability to create an “intuitive link,” a special understanding, between themselves and their customers. This link gives the customer the feeling that he or she is truly understood.
Once the intuitive link has been established, it is much easier to influence the prospect. And, with this link, the prospect clearly believes that his or her well-understood needs will be met. Where does this “intuitive link” come from? The answer is mind-reading.
Average salespeople project their own personal needs, wants and interests onto customers. They assume customers want and like the same things they want and like. The sales pro does not focus on himself to understand what the prospect wants. Rather, the sales pro focuses outwardly, directly on the customer.
The sales pro establishes an intuitive link with the customer by temporarily adopting the customer’s views, tastes, and values. The sales pro thinks like the customer thinks, using the intuitive link. By fully adopting the customer’s views and thought patterns, sales champions show so much insight into the customer that the customer feels that the salesperson can almost read his or her mind.
Mind-reading techniques give the customer the impression that he or she is intuitively understood by the salesperson. Top salespeople develop almost psychic skills in reading their customers. Like psychics or mind-readers, top salespeople collect information through carefully observing the clothing, hands, face, posture, speech patterns, mannerisms, and gestures of their clients.
How can you communicate that you can read another person’s mind? By using statements that are likely to be true of almost anyone. While these statements are generalizations, if you say them with great feeling and sincerity, prospects will be amazed at your understanding of them. Examples of mind reading statements used by top salespeople are:
“I can see that you are a practical person,”
“You impress me as someone who tries to take care of his health.”
Most people see themselves as “practical” people. When you use the first sentence above, you will get a nod of agreement and internally, the client will feel you understand him or her. Most people will also feel that the second statement applies to them. Notice that the statement is not, “You take care of your health,” but it is “You try to take care of your health.” Inserting the word “try” makes it applicable to virtually everyone, and if you say it with feeling, people will think you understand every little thing they do to try to take care of themselves.
You can use mind-reading statements that apply to sales:
“You are the kind of person who won’t be talked into buying something you don’t want.”
Most people will agree with this statement and they will feel reassured that you know that about them. They will feel they can trust you a little more. They may infer that you won’t try to talk them into buying something they don’t want. They will let down some of their defensiveness.
One of the most effective ways of using mind-reading statements is to capitalize on truisms. A truism is a statement or a fact that is true for almost anyone. To make truisms into questions, add “. . . isn’t that right?”, “. . . don’t you?”, “. . . didn’t they?”, or any other tag question onto the end of any truism you use:
“You want to have a nice prosperous retirement, isn’t that right?”
“You try to take good care of yourself, don’t you?”
“You are interested in saving money, aren’t you?”
Almost all people will answer “yes” to these questions, and they might be amazed you knew this about them. The best salespeople have hundreds of truisms they use which are based on stock psychological profiles. A great source of stock psychological profiles is the daily astrology column in your local newspaper. Even if you don’t believe in astrology, you can select and use some of the “meaningful generalizations” from these astrology columns to communicate to your customers that you understand them. These astrology columns and astrology chart profiles are written in wonderful language that seems to apply just to you (or just to those born under your sign), but which actually applies to a great many people.
When you use mind-reading questions and mind-reading statements, pronounce them in a confident and knowing tone of voice. Pronounce mind-reading questions as if you have known these truisms about your customer for years. It is OK to use some generalizations, as long as you sound self-confident when you deliver them. When your customer hears these generalities, his mind will automatically customize them and personalize them. Mentally, he will say, “That’s me!” as he searches through his memory bank for a more exact understanding. Just as with an astrology column, the customer “fills in the missing details,” and you have begun to build that “intuitive link” with the customer.
In addition to building rapport, mind-reading questions can be an excellent method for gathering information about your prospect. The following exchange between a sales pro and customer illustrates how this is accomplished:
| Sales Pro: | You are interested in a car that projects an image of success, aren’t you? |
| Prospect: | Yeah, my ranch is doing really well this year, and I want people to see I’m in the money! |
Who isn’t interested in a car that projects an image of success? If you had absolutely no interest in looking successful, you’d be happy driving any car that was safe. The reason people buy new cars is to communicate a message to other people about who they are and how successful they are.
In this exchange, the salesperson not only used a mind-reading question, but he also paced the customer’s visual language. This sales pro observed that the customer uses visual words such as “see,” “image,” “clear,” and “bright.” He used the same kind of visual language (“image”) in his mind-reading question.
Let’s look at the information this mind-reading question produced. The sales pro learned that the prospect has a ranch that is doing quite well. This could be useful to the salesman later in the sales interaction. He might decide to use some words relating to ranching or farming, which would pace the rancher’s vocabulary. Another powerful technique would be to tell the prospect about other ranchers who are his happy customers (as described in the “Other People Metaphors” section in the previous chapter).
Some sales pros also use mind-reading statements and questions to learn what actions customers are likely to take in the future. Kenny Clyde, Vice President at United Resources, teaches his salespeople to use this approach by using a generalization followed by a mind-reading question:
“Many people like to borrow against the money that accumulates in their annuity. Have you been thinking about doing that?”
If they have been thinking of borrowing against the funds that have accumulated in their annuity (and some clients are surprised that the salesperson knows them well enough to have figured this out!), Kenny will show them their different options and the interest rate they will be paying. He will also have an opportunity to talk about other financial products United Resources and Integrated Resources offer which can satisfy other financial planning needs.
The mind-reading question combines the advantages of mind-reading (showing clients you understand how they think) and information-gathering. Your prospect will either tell you that you’re right on track, or he will tell you how to get on track. You can’t go wrong with mind-reading questions.
How and When to Ask Bottom Line Questions
As the sales process moves along, the salesperson wants to know what could prevent the prospect from buying his product or service. The sales pro needs to know any fears, doubts, or uncertainties the prospect has that may interfere with the sale.
Bottom-line questions are best used right before you ask for the order. At this point, the salesperson has already established a solid rapport with the customer. While the salesperson is still interested in pacing the customer and in maintaining rapport, the questions asked at this time should get more direct and bottom-line oriented:
It is interesting to note that this question makes the presupposition that the prospect has only one main concern. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the customer answers the question as it was posed. Even if the prospect says he has two or three concerns left, you still win. You know exactly what issues you have to deal with to get the sale.
Here is a very effective Bottom-Line Question to use when the prospect raises an objection at the end of the sales call:
“Is that the only thing that is holding you back?”
This question, or a minor variation of it, is one of the most effective of all closing questions. If the customer’s response is positive, the salesperson knows he or she has a good chance of closing the sale. It means there is only one remaining issue to be dealt with. If the response is negative, the salesperson will learn any other concerns that prevent the customer from buying.
A Bottom-Line Question used by top salespeople in the automobile field is:
“Tell me, what would I have to do to sell you this car today?”
The answer the customer provides gets right to the bottom-line and lets the salesperson know what kind of chance he or she has of selling the car. If the prospect says, “You have to drop the price you just offered me by $200,” the salesperson can get the sale by either dropping the price or perhaps by selling a nearly identical car that doesn’t have one of the options. If the customer responds that he or she wants an extra option or a free extended warranty, the salesperson can work on that. Sometimes the customer asks for something that is ridiculous or that can’t be done. In this case, the salesperson can inform the customer that his or her request is unrealistic. The customer can either change his or her request, or can leave. Bottom-line questions save both the salesperson and the customer time and energy.
As effective as bottom-line questions are, they should not be used until there is a good bond of trust between the salesperson and the customer. If you ask the bottom-line question too early in the sales call, you are likely to get a lower quality answer. If a customer doesn’t know you and trust you, he or she may respond to a bottom-line question by saying, “There is nothing you can do to get me to buy today,” even if he or she is genuinely interested in your product or service.
If you haven’t been able to consummate the sale, near the end of your sales call, you may want to ask the following bottom-line question:
“Is there something you haven’t told me?”
This is a very powerful bottom-line question. You want to ask it in a soft, friendly tone of voice. The purpose of this question is to flush out the one major concern that is preventing the prospect from buying—the concern he or she has not told you about yet. If you have built a good level of trust, and if you come across as genuinely friendly and helpful, this question can sometimes get the prospect to reveal his or her “secret agenda.” You may find out that there is someone else involved in making this decision. You may find out that they have a relative in the business and they feel they have to buy from that person (even though they would prefer not to). You may find out some other “secret” factor that hasn’t been revealed until you ask, “Is there something else going on you haven’t told me about?”
It is important to emphasize the fact that the information gathered in the first few minutes and the last few minutes of the sales call is frequently the most valuable. By strategically using Bottom-Line Questions, you will be able to collect exactly the information you need near the end of the sales call to close the sale!
Knowing Exactly How Many Questions to Ask
Since questioning techniques yield such useful information on the prospect’s belief systems and self-identity, a fair question is “Why not use lots of sales questions earlier in the sales interaction?”
The answer is that if solid rapport between the salesperson and the customer is not established first, the customer will probably feel uncomfortable giving answers. In fact, if they are uncomfortable, some prospects may actually present a false picture in order to mislead the salesperson.
While the information gathered from using sales questions is obviously valuable, it is not sufficient to close sales. This information is useful only if gathered in a climate of trust and good will. That’s why sales champions first concentrate on building trust. Once that is accomplished, the customer will give you all the information and cooperation you want.
Controlling the Decision to Buy
With the good feelings and trust you have built, and with all the information you have collected on the customer’s self-concept, needs, values, and belief systems, you can sell so persuasively it becomes very difficult for the customer to refuse to buy. In fact, the only way that the prospect can refuse to buy your product or service (if he genuinely needs it and can afford it) is to deny all the information he or she has provided! This is something that is almost impossible for people to do.
Knock and the door shall be opened. Ask questions and ye shall receive. When you build trust and ask the right questions, your prospects will give you all the information you need to solve their problems and fulfill their dreams. When you build trust and ask the right questions, your prospects will give you all the information you need to close the sale.