Remember when you were a kid how your parents always used to tell you what to do? Go to bed, clean your room, finish your dinner. All of us received those commands as a child. Although I usually obeyed my parents, like the angel of a child I was, I sometimes questioned why I had to do what they told me. One command I often didn’t enjoy receiving was, “Ryan, it’s time to go to bed.” So, I figured out the ‘perfect’ way to stall my parents and sometimes even get them to let me stay up later! The conversations would go a little like this:
Mom: “Ryan, time for bed it’s 9:00.”
Me: “Mom please let me stay up longer, just a half hour more.”
Mom: “No, honey it’s important to get your sleep.”
Me: “Why?”
Mom: “Because if you don’t go to bed you will be tired all day tomorrow?”
Me: “Why?”
Mom: “Because you will run out of energy from not sleeping.”
Me: “Why?”
… I think you get the idea.
Although childish in nature, asking why is a very effective sales technique one can use to dive deeper into a client’s needs. A client may only be willing to offer you surface level answers. You, as the salesperson, will sense that there is a deeper reason for their pain; however they just wont let it out. Asking ‘Why’ type questions will allow you to get to the center of their pain, which will allow you to help them more effectively. The conversation could look something like this:
Salesperson: “So, what exactly is it that you are looking for from us?”
Client: “Well, we’re just really having trouble getting our name out there to potential customers.”
Salesperson: “Why do you think that is?”
Client: “I think we just need a better marketing plan.”
Salesperson: “Do you think a solid marketing plan would solve your problem?”
Client: “I think that we need to focus on who we are selling to, and try to speak to them.”
Salesperson: “Who are you trying to sell to?”
Client: “Our target market is males between the age of 30-45 who are married.”
… end scene.
In this conversation the salesperson effectively used ‘Why’ type questions to get to the source of the client’s pain. As you can see, the ‘why’ questions don’t literally have to be “Why?” The goal of the questions is simply to find out the root cause of the prospects pain. At the beginning of the conversation the client simply said they needed help with marketing. By the end of the talk, the client revealed their target market, something that is really important to a marketing firm. By using ‘why’ type questions, you can dive deep into a prospects pain and find out what is actually motivating them.
BoweryJE22
I really enjoyed this more detailed analysis of Sweet’s point made yesterday, well done!
This post is very relevant and I appreciated how you broke everything down. The example of why to use why in a sales conversation is great. I hadn’t really thought about how using why in a conversation would play so I appreciated you breaking it out a bit more. Thanks for sharing!
I think we can all relate to the “why” kid conversations you referenced from your childhood, which makes this such a great post. In your post, you said the why questions don’t have to just be simply asking “why?” but more complex questions to get to the root of the problem or thought the client is having. I think that was a really great point, because if you literally just kept asking why, they would probably get annoyed like our moms used to when we were kids! 🙂