Phase 6: Questions

Objective:

Asking targeted questions play an important role in setting up for the eventual sale. This gives you a clear understanding of any potential objections will come up and how you can best shape your sales presentation for maximum results.

Introduction:

This phase shouldn’t you too take to long for you to cover off but plays an important role in the discovery call process. Your goal is to use this opportunity to get a real understanding of where your prospect is at in their buying journey right now and how they are thinking about this purchase decision.

It’s really important that you understand there are three types of answers you’re going to get to the questions you ask at this stage, they are:

1. Possibility: These are questions, statements or answers which suggest your prospect is thinking about the different possibilities of your product or service. This shows they understand what you’ve said up until this point and are already thinking about how this will impact them.
2. Objections: These are questions, statements or answers which highlight any potential issues they see with your product or service. Don’t be alarmed by these, if you’ve properly qualified your prospect and invested time to understand their needs this is exactly like a possibility answer. They’re already thinking about how your product will impact them.
3. Buying Answers: These are questions, statements or answers which indicate their buying intent. This can be questions about pricing (discussed in next lesson separately), how your product works. your operating terms. This show that your prospect is already seeing enough value and likely to purchase.

During your needs analysis and qualification phase you would have been asking lots of open questions to encourage your prospect to speak openly and give you more infomation. At this stage of the Discovery call your questions need to be far more directed and even closed so you can begin moving towards closing the call successfully.

Note: If you haven’t been thorough in creating a clear needs analysis and qualifying your prospect, this will be exposed at this stage, giving you an opportunity to go back and re-qualify before proceeding.

Strategies for Asking Questions:

There is a specific sequence of questions you need to ask at this stage…

Question 1: So from what you understand about our company and product/service, can you see a possibility of us being able to help you with [problem 1] in your business?

• This is intended on getting a YES or NO Answer, although most of your prospects will answer with some version of “Maybe” which is good.

Question 2: So what are the questions you have at this stage about our Product/service?

• This is intentionally vague and designed to allow your prospect to share exactly what’s on their mind. It’s likely that a pricing question will come up at this point.

How To Answer Questions:

In the next lesson we’re going to talk specifically about price, but regardless of whether the pricing question comes up or another question, your first step in answering any answer you get is to first acknowledge their feedback and then move on to asking question 3

Question 3: Are there any other questions, thoughts or concerns you have about our product/service?

• Pause for a few seconds at this stage and give your prospect an opportunity to think, don’t be too quick to move on.

Once you have all the information out in the open, you want to move onto setting up for the next steps. You don’t want to get caught up in answering all of their questions at this stage, as doing so will reduce their curiosity and make them less likely to want to proceed any further.

Homework Assignment:

The homework assignment for this lesson will be included in with Phase 7, Pricing