5 (Powerful) Sales Questions To Ask A Potential Client To Determine Their Needs

Be sure to register for my free training on, "The 5-Step Formula to Closing More Deals without the Price Pushback, 'Think-It-Overs' or Ghosting" https://salesinsightslab.com/training/
1. Tell me more about that challenge.
I'm going to assume that you've already engaged the prospect in some conversation about their challenges or their concerns or their needs and so what we want to do is think of it like an onion right?
What you want to do is go so much deeper than that outer layer. you want to get to the inside, and so you want to start to think almost like a psychologist the initial thing that someone says is virtually meaningless. What matters is what comes out when you peel back the layers.
2. What's a recent example of that?
They've mentioned a challenge they've told you a little bit more about that. And now what we want to do is take it from academic to real prospects will talk about challenges and there they are academic.
3. What does that translate to in dollars?
You can start to translate the challenges that your prospects are bringing to you translate that into Dollars. Then that's where you're getting them to tell you the value of the problem. That's where they're getting the actual value of the solution.
If you were able to solve this challenge, what would it mean in dollars and suddenly, that's why they come back with well if we're able to solve that.
I mean that's at least five million dollars in additional sales that we could be achieving. He just had five million dollars, right? That's where we're starting to get to the value. And that's also in their head. They're planting the seed for themselves the importance of working with someone like me.
4. Why is this an issue right now?
This is important because so often is this and even just human life is about doing triage, right?
You're getting them to think about solving the challenge that they mentioned, but at the same time, it's also reinforcing in their head. Yeah. This is important to solve; I'm talking to this person who's asked me some compelling questions to get me to articulate why I care about this stuff.
You're creating that relationship, you're creating that trust, and ultimately you are the obvious choice.
5. How is this affecting you directly?
This is a crucial question because so often, challenges are focused again on this kind of academic setting where it's affecting the organization.
It's another way of getting deeper into what they care about. So again unpack that for me is one of my new favorites. Since that I'm using learned this from a salesperson when I was working with, and they said, you know, I use the phrase unpack that for me, and it's just a disarming way to get a prospect to go deeper in what they just said.