by Paul Cherry
•“This morning’s New York Times quoted the Federal Reserve as saying an interest-rate hike is imminent. If it happened, how do you see this impacting your plans moving forward?”
Educational questions are great because they take advantage of something you are doing already—keeping up with industry news and trends—while elevating your status in the eyes of prospective and current customers. Do not try to pepper every conversation with educational questions: It will not appear natural. One educational question per meeting is enough to solidify your role as consultant.
Once you have asked an educational question, you will need to listen carefully to the response and tailor your follow-up questions to move the conversation in a direction where you can offer help to the prospective customer.
You should have a plan in place to transition the meeting from the educational question to the concerns of the individual with whom you are meeting. Such questions will not always lead directly into a discussion of your product or service, but a good educational question should lay the groundwork for an exchange of ideas and provoke a response from your prospective customer.
The information you use for an educational question does not necessarily need to come from a news source. As a salesperson, you interact with numerous people in your industry every day. By prefacing your question with the statement, “Some of my other clients have been telling me,” you’ll find that you can leverage your other customer relationships to boost your credibility with prospects. They will more fully appreciate your ability to share vital information—information that’s unique to you, not cribbed from your company’s marketing materials or a quick Google search. Prospective customers love hearing what’s going on with your other customers because it shows that you’re in tune with trends, industry challenges, opportunities, and how others in the industry are tackling them.
Of course, you do need to be careful about what you disclose. And that goes beyond any legal duty you have to protect confidentiality. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself whether other customers would be upset if they were in the room listening to what you say about them. For example, I might mention a customer’s name to a prospect as long as there’s nothing confidential about my work with them and as long as it’s not a competitor.
Even so, I tread carefully. I once put my foot in my mouth when I was describing what I’d done for another client and the prospect asked me who it was. I mentioned the company’s name because they were an industry leader and thought it would impress my prospect. Not so: The prospect replied, “Oh, they have a bad reputation and their service is horrible. I guess whatever you did for them didn’t help.” Oh, well. You can’t win ’em all.
So when that question comes up now, here’s what I say: “I’m not at liberty to share the client’s name. But I can discuss the issues they faced and how they overcame them.” I don’t recall anyone ever pushing back on that response. In fact, this response signals to prospects that you can be trusted with any sensitive information they choose to share with you.
More Examples of Educational Questions
Here are some additional examples:
•“The intense changes in technology have been especially influential on your industry. According to ___________ , many firms in your industry are experiencing ___________ . What are you experiencing?”
•“Here are three trends I’m hearing a lot about from my clients: ___________ , ___________ , and ___________ . Which one do you see as most important?”
•“I just attended a Webinar, which claimed, among other things, that attention spans for millennials today are 40 percent shorter than ten years ago. That would certainly have a big impact on how to hire and manage a younger workforce today. But I’m not sure I buy it. What do you think?”
•“How will you be affected by the new legislation regarding __________?”
When to Use an Educational Question
There are four key times when an educational question will be most useful:
1. As a teaser on a voice mail message so prospects will return your call
2. As an icebreaker at the beginning of a meeting
3. When a sales conversation has gotten stuck
4. When you want to add new pizazz to an existing customer relationship
As a voice mail strategy to prompt callbacks: The first instance is probably the simplest to execute. We’ve all experienced days almost entirely spent on the phone, leaving voice mail messages for prospective and current customers only to see none of those calls returned. It’s one of the biggest frustrations when prospecting.
Rather than simply leaving your name and number (or worse, a three-minute speech about your product), leave an educational question that conveys a sense of importance or urgency, something intriguing, or something of value.
For example, consider a voice mail message left by a member of a marketing firm for an insurance executive:
Jenna: Hi, Bill. This is Jenna Matson with ABC Consulting. I was reading a report in the Wall Street Journal that I thought would be of interest to you. It said that increased state and federal regulations could force a number of agencies in the Southeast to either consolidate or close their doors. However, a number of firms I’ve spoken to want to capitalize on these changes by terminating unprofitable business and focusing their efforts on more lucrative markets. I was wondering if this is something you’re dealing with. Why don’t you give me a call and I can share some ideas on what other firms are doing. Thanks!
Although Bill was most likely already aware of the changes in state and federal regulations, Jenna brought those changes to the surface and presented herself as someone who could help provide some answers.
As an icebreaker: As a way to begin a conversation and build rapport with a prospective customer, an educational question not only will inspire your prospective customer to start talking but can also alleviate some of the pressure of “the sales process.” The educational question doesn’t immediately steer the prospective customer toward buying your product or service, nor should it be self-serving. Instead, you use the educational question to signal that you understand some of their challenges and to allow the prospective customer to voice her feelings, to vent, and to relate to you as a consultant.
Let’s look at an example of the educational question used as an icebreaker:
Lucas needs to find a new way to connect with prospects. He’d asked the last one about his hobbies and was forced to sit through a twenty-minute rant about how hard it is to get tee time in the city. Eventually, the prospect looked at his watch and mumbled something about having to go to another meeting. Lucas quickly described his products as the prospect sidled toward the door.
With his next prospect, Lucas takes a different strategy. Instead of starting down in the weeds by talking about his product, he starts at the 10,000-foot level, by discussing an industry issue that will resonate with his prospect, and then glides down to a lower altitude. When you start low—which is where most salespeople start—it’s hard to get your buyer to climb back up to see the big picture.
This time, Lucas starts with a research report that offers some shocking statistics about how much time employees spend on the Internet on personal business.
He refers to the report during his next meeting with Larry, the IT director of a large bank:
Lucas: Larry, I brought along a copy of a report from the Society of Human Resource Management, which shows that employees in large companies spend more than an hour each day on the Internet for personal reasons. The cost to a typical Fortune 1000 company is billions of dollars annually. I’m curious as to your thoughts about this issue.
Larry: It’s interesting that you bring that up. We talked about this problem at last month’s executive meeting. But we’re not sure what the legalities are surrounding the issue, and we wonder how the employees would feel if we kept tabs on them. Does the report mention those issues at all?
Lucas: As a matter of fact it does . . .
&n
bsp; Although this particular question might not lead to any business for Lucas, he has positioned himself in the IT director’s mind as (1) a credible source of information and (2) someone who is attuned to the kinds of issues that are important to the company’s executives. In other words, Lucas is someone he should consider when a need arises.
As a way to move a stuck conversation forward: The third way educational questions can be used is when a conversation flags and there’s little or no forward momentum. Here, the goal is to get buyers to take a position and defend it, which reengages them in the conversation. And once you find out how they really feel about the subject, you can stop filling the time with idle chatter and get on with the sale. Educational questions ask prospects to stop sitting on the fence and take a side. And when they do, their emotions automatically show through.
Here is another example of an educational question, this time used to get the individual to take a position:
Kathy, who works for an employee benefits company, has been struggling through a frustrating meeting for the last thirty minutes. She has tried to get Marla, the president of a construction company, to communicate her frustrations and motivations, but Marla sits there like a stone wall.
As long as Marla plays her cards this close to the vest, Kathy’s going to have a hard time connecting. So she tries to get Marla to express an opinion about something that’s at least tangentially related to what she sells—in this case, employee benefits:
Kathy: As you know, attracting high-quality applicants is an ongoing struggle for many construction firms. Some of my clients insist that comprehensive health-care coverage is what employees want most. Others disagree, saying that what people want most is more take-home pay, even if the benefits are reduced. What are your thoughts?
Marla: Well, it’s complicated. The rates for coverage have been increasing about 15 percent annually for the last five years, and that’s a lot, especially for younger workers. But the average age of our workforce is thirty-seven and most of our guys have families. Therefore, health-care coverage is a necessity. In fact, when we’ve tried cheaper plans, they didn’t work. Turnover increased and we found this subject coming up in our exit interviews. We discovered that talented people were leaving because our competitors offered better plans.
Kathy: Well, as you know, we work with many construction companies like yours, and we hear the same thing. We’ve found some creative yet competitive ways to balance costs and coverage, and they’ve been well received by employees.
Marla: Yes, that’s something I’d like us to look into. I’ll set up a meeting for you with my human resources director.
Obviously, every educational question isn’t going to lead to a contract. But these questions do provide the opportunity for you to make inroads and establish yourself as a partner rather than simply someone trying to sell a product.
To reignite the spark when calling on existing relationships: Finally, an educational question is a way to create new enthusiasm with a customer you’ve been working with for some time. It provides a good alternative to the customary questions thrown at established customers. Instead of “checking in” or “touching base” with questions like “Is there anything I can do for you today?” or “I’ll be in the area and thought I’d stop by” or “How are things going?” you can bring fresh information to the table. A provocative educational question can get a customer to revisit their emotions—the same emotions that got them to buy in the first place. And by bringing new ideas and perspectives to your clients, you lock in your position as a consultant and trusted adviser. It’s a great way to keep the conversations fresh and engaging especially when you are calling on the same people again and again.
By now you may be asking yourself: Why do I need to be seen as a partner or a critical resource? How will that help me in the long run, after I have gotten the contract?
Keep in mind that if you are not personally adding value to the customer—and by that I mean something above and beyond the value that your product or service provides—you become expendable. If a new, cheaper product comes into town, the buyer has no reason to remain loyal. If all you are providing to your customers is a product or service, then the deciding factor when your customer is weighing a change in vendor becomes the price. Even though you might have built a relationship and had good rapport with your customer, another salesperson who can offer the same product at a 10 percent discount may easily take your place. Educational questions can help you keep from being commoditized.
A Caveat
One caveat when using educational questions: They can’t be self-serving. Salespeople sometimes are tempted to use this format to try to “soften up” a hard-sell, product-focused pitch—for example, as a statement to try to establish the product’s value, your company’s credentials, or as lead-in to an unsolicited elevator pitch. Used in this way, educational questions will often backfire.
Educational questions need to position you as neutral and objective. Not in a deceptive or manipulative way—after all, you and your prospect both know you want to sell something—but in the sense of putting the customer’s interests first. So, for example, it’s best to use credible third-party information and not something like this: “We surveyed over a hundred of our customers, and 94.3% said they were extremely satisfied with our product. In fact, 4% said they would not be in business today if it wasn’t for us. One customer told me yesterday that they realized a savings of over $100,000 in just one quarter. Soooo, if we could deliver results like that for you, how would you feel?” That’s an “educational” question that educates no one. It doesn’t lower a prospect’s defenses but raises them.
Exercise
Creating effective educational questions takes some practice. You can’t just mention something in the news and expect your buyer to respond. The question has to be relevant, it has to relate to what you sell in some way, and it has to lead to a meaningful conversation.
In this exercise:
1. Create three educational questions that you could use during meetings with prospective customers.
2. Formulate an educational question that can serve as an icebreaker at a meeting with someone in your industry.
3. Come up with an educational question that you can use to find out someone’s opinion about a hot topic in your industry.
CHAPTER FOUR
4
Lock-On Questions and Impact Questions
How to Uncover What Your Buyer Won’t—or Can’t—Tell You
IN THE PREVIOUS chapter, we looked at how you can use educational questions to initiate a sales conversation, either with a prospect or with an existing customer. But how do you keep that conversation going and direct it in a way that leads to deeper insights that will unlock an opportunity? In this chapter and the ones that follow, we’re going to look at several types of questions that allow you to build on what a buyer tells you. We’ll focus on two types of questions to help you extend that initial conversation: “lock-on” and “impact” questions.
Have you ever faced a situation where your conversations with a buyer start off strong and then just peter out? Or a conversation where a buyer wanders all over the map but never gets you any closer to a sale? Lock-on and impact questions maintain the flow of a natural conversation while providing a way to steer the discussion in certain directions. They allow you to zero in on a particular point of interest and direct the customer’s attention to that point. This saves you time and energy and helps lead you to a high-value solution for the customer.
Another benefit of these questions is their ability to clarify the thoughts and feelings of your customers. The business world is dominated by jargon. Words are often used with little or no meaning attached to them. Sometimes even the customer does not know exactly what his words mean. Often in conversation customers will use words and phrases such as quality, strategic focus, or streamlining the process without really defining them. Lock-on questions enable you to get into a customer’s head to determine
what she really means. Through your use of lock-on questions, you have the incredible opportunity to hear customers articulate their problems and expand on their ideas.
Dartnell Research, a leading research firm, has found that 80 percent of the time customers do not verbalize their real concerns and problems. Rather, they tend to conceal issues that might reveal vulnerability. Lock-on questions encourage customers to open up. Instead of becoming bogged down in jargon and superficiality, the conversation is rich in facts and experiences that really matter. You can then use the information to tap into the customer’s emotions, beliefs, and values through the sorts of questions we’ll discuss in later chapters.
How to Create Lock-On Questions
To create a lock-on question, you simply lock on to something the buyer said. But not just any old thing. You want to lock on to something that you believe could give you—as well as buyers themselves—greater insight into their needs.
Here’s an example:
Customer: We have been trying to get this project off the ground for several months.
Lock-on question: I noticed you said the word trying. What has worked so far and what has not?
Trying is the key word to focus on in this example. The word represents feelings of frustration and discouragement at not being able to achieve a goal. Here, the customer has given you a great opportunity to bring the problems to the surface, to have her relive those feelings and then look to you for a solution. When you’re looking for something to lock on to, pay attention to high-emotion words.
Let’s look at some more examples.
Customer: I am looking for a partnership rather than just someone to sell me a product.