2 Simple Questions to Actually Transform Prospects into Buyers

In the Middle of the Sales Funnel, the Discovery phase, sellers help contacts assess their current situations. Once we have established ourselves as a think-partner and shared our intelligence during the beginning stages of the business relationship, we have earned the right to ask questions.

Program on Persuasion’s corporate sales training has identified two types of questions to move your prospect from Satisfied with their current option toward Crisis mode. This post focuses on those two questions, how to use them, and what to do when they work.

 

What is “Crisis Mode?”

When a prospect has no complaints about their current option, we say they are satisfied. That seldom means, though, that their current option is a perfect fit. Usually, it means that their whatever they are doing now is good enough to not look like they have a crisis.

You may have thought that you needed to find buyers who were already in “crisis” mode, but that is not the case. At any given moment, only about 3% of the population is in crisis. Trying to find them is like trying to time the market—it’s very difficult to do.

Buyers actually realize when they are in crisis mode, and they have enough urgency to change. That could be why a buyer reached out to you. When we reach out to buyers, we will very seldom find them in crisis because if they realize they are in crisis, they have already moved to get out of crisis.

For all these reasons, we are actually looking for buyers who are “satisfied.” Program on Persuasion’s corporate sales training coaches how to move buyers into crisis—or, rather, it is our job to help them discover urgency. This can only happen through revealing that there are potential significant problems or real opportunities.

The First Type of Question: Impact Questions

Impact Questions are they type of question that our corporate sales training shows really start to help the client move from Satisfied towards Crisis.

First, through asking Impact Questions, we need to establish the cost of not fixing the problems that we isolated during the Problem/Opportunity Questions phase. After all, if there is no cost, then there is no problem.

Remember, when we find a problem or opportunity, it will be the seller’s tendency to move into solution. Instead, our corporate sales training replaces that habit with moving into Impact Questions. Impact Questions reveal the negative consequences associated with not fixing the problem or achieving the opportunities. The purpose is to help the buyer discover the pain. They must realize the pain associated with staying in their comfort zone.

As the think-partner in the business relationship, the sellers need to make sure that the buyer evaluates the cost of the problem before they evaluate the cost of our solution. This is why we don’t discuss our solution until the buyer fully realizes the cost of the problem.

Examples of Impact Questions

Here are a few examples of our corporate sales training’s most effective Impact Questions:

  1. What are consequences of not fixing the problem?
  2. How does that impact your customer?
  3. How frequently does that occur?
  4. Does this affect employee morale?
  5. Does this have the potential to hurt your reputation?

The Role of the Impact Question

The role of the Impact Question is to help the buyer discover the effect of their problem. We answer the question, is this something that warrants making a change? The consequences must be real. If there is no seriousness to the problem, offering a solution to that problem would be fruitless. The buyer will not take a solution that does not warrant effort.

We should avoid, however, telling the buyer what is urgent. Changes must be their ideas. They have the answers, but we—the sellers—have the questions. Forcing the answers is not our role. Our corporate sales training coaches how to help the buyers think through which problems and opportunities—if left unaddressed—have the potential to have serious costs.

Psychiatrists tell us that we constantly move in one of two directions: we move either away from pain or toward pleasure. Pain is the bigger motivator than pleasure.

We trigger that pain with Impact Questions, the questions that reveal the negative consequences of not solving a problem or obtaining a goal. Desired Results Questions also create Urgency, but they do so by appealing to the pleasure principle. Impact questions elicit decisions to change.  Desired Results focus on the benefits of the change.

The Second Type of Question: Desired Results Questions

When people talk about their goals, they form a mental picture of their desires—a craving or something better than what they have now. The things that we desire most earnestly, we believe most easily.

When we think of traditional selling, we think of the Feature and Benefit model. The “Feature” is what the product or service actually does, and the “Benefit” is what it does for the buyer—the problem it solves or the goal it helps obtain. The one, huge downside to this approach is that it assumes all buyers want the same benefit. Not all buyers want the same benefits.

Our corporate sales training instead helps the buyer Discover their desired benefit. To continue the most effective business relationship, sellers should help prospects find out their Desired Results.

Return on Investment

Business decisions are usually made on a Return On Investment (ROI) performance. The easiest part to grasp is the “I,” or the investment: that’s how much it costs. The investment is not only the cost of your product, but the total cost of the solution, which includes implementation, the cost of change, the price and time of training, etcetera.) The investment aspect is the part of the ROI equation that is easy for the buyer to understand, and it makes the inclined to say no to change.

The harder part of the ROI equation is the return. The return answers the question, “What do I get for the investment?” Rather than the buyer guessing at what return s/he wants, our corporate sales training says to ask Desired Results Questions to uncover how the buyer wants to benefit.

Examples of Desired Results Questions

  1. Is the problem worth fixing?
  2. How do you benefit by accomplishing your goal?
  3. What could you be doing if you didn’t have this problem?
  4. If the problem didn’t exist, how would your customers benefit?
  5. If accomplished this goal, would it provide a competitive advantage?

Conclusion

Our corporate sales training utilizes Impact Questions and Desired Results Questions to help contacts assess their current situations and identify problems. The business relationship allows the seller to ask those questions effectively and to take action when the questions work. Once the buyer realizes that s/he does in fact have a problem, they will ask you, the seller and think-partner, “What do you think I should do?” Then you can proceed into the Bottom of the Sales Funnel.

Photo by Olu Eletu.