Finding a customer problem is the first step to winning the business and the part of the sales conversation where many reps. struggle. You want to create a value-based sales conversation that does both; tie your solutions to business problems and show your differentiation. But you must start with discovery questions in the conversation.
If you can’t identify your customer and their most compelling pain points, then you will never having a meaningful relationship of a buyer and seller. You must aske open ended questions that get the customer talking about themselves and where they struggle. This is a two-sided conversation, when the customer gets talking about their problems and admits it out loud then they are becoming more motivated to do something about that issue. That is when you, as the seller, can come in and support them just like you’ve been doing the entire conversation.
Sellers need to develop the skill of getting the customer to talk about their needs so that they seller can understand the buyer as much as possible.
Now that you can identify the customers you must be able to use questions that explain how your solutions are superior to your competitors. Good questions like these highlight the value that the customer will receive because of a differentiator that you have. Just like the pervious questions these questions need to be open ended. The idea is for the customer to form a link between your value and the customer value that they just admitted when explaining about their problem. Let your questions be broad at first but become more and more detailed as the conversation goes on. When all is said and done, the customer should feel that your idea is tailer made to their issue and the competitor is not. These questions will help you get your buyer to anchor on required capabilities in a way that your competitors simply can’t measure up to.
Discovering your customer is the most important part of this process because without it you are blind. The questions you ask that will help the customer understand your values and how they line up with their problems will solidify the deal.
https://www.forcemanagement.com/seller-blog/how-to-ask-the-right-questions-in-your-sales-conversation
BoweryJE22
Super cool read! People often don’t realize the power of asking questions. People want to be known and you cant do that when you aren’t asking about them.
You are so right about the importance of asking questions. They are how you know what your customer’s needs are (and every customer’s needs will be different)! Additionally it helps form a relationship with your customer.