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Hey guys, this is Steli Efti with Close.io. I want to talk about the art of asking powerful
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questions and actually getting real answers to those questions. A lot of times when you
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qualify a prospect, you have to ask a bunch of questions to truly understand who they
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are and if they're a good fit and how to sell to them effectively. Many times when
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I teach that asking questions is the most important skill in sales, people tell me,
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“Yes Steli but people get annoyed when you ask them too many questions.”
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I get this all the time where people just, “How can I ask questions without annoying
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people, without getting to kind of a conversational dynamic that's not natural anymore and without
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having the prospect actually raise up their defenses and their mental blocks because they're
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feeling like they're being attacked by all these questions?” First, how to not ask
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questions correctly and then get these kind of outcomes.
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Too many times I see people asking questions to prospects as if they're reading it off
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a list. As if it's irrelevant, what the answer is every question seems to just get
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a checkpoint from the person asking it to get to the next question. You get people going,
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“Dear prospect, tell me, how many people in your company would use our product?”
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the prospect goes, “I don't know really maybe about five to 10 people.”
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“Tell me, what kind of features are the most important ones for you?” “For us
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it's really important that it has feature X, Y and Z.” “Cool, yeah we do provide
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all these features.” “Dear prospect let me ask you another question?”
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Do you see how the dynamic is fucked up? It doesn't matter what I answer, the person
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just goes, “Sure, sure, great!” this is another bad thing to do.
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After every answer you say, “Great,” or “Sure” or “Awesome,” or something.
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It's like, “Really, is every answer I give awesome or great or are you just happy
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that you got some answer and you just want to move on with your life?”
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Male: It can be awesome and great. It could be, but it also could be that you
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just say that to everything and everybody and you just want to get to the next question.
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When you have a dynamic like that where somebody asked you questions and it doesn't seem
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like they care about the answer, they just want to go on with the next question, you
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feel like you're being interrogated. You feel like you're wasting time. It's a
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pretty frustrating experience and it doesn't feel great to be that person that's being
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asked all these questions. The other thing is when you're super authoritarian
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and you just go, “How many people do you guys have over there?”
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Calm down, bro. I'm not like … you're not police. I'm not at custody. I don't
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have to answer all your questions. Chill out, maybe you want to ask in a way that suggests
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that you're curios, that you care and that I have the power to answer or not answer.
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Not that you are some authority and you're demanding answers. That's not going to work.
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That's not going to be a pleasant experience. You want to have the mind frame that you truly
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care to reach what I call full understanding. You want to fully understand the other person.
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Think of it as in painting by numbers. It's not enough to just get an outline of who they
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are. It's not enough to just get an outline of what you're painting, them just telling
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you it's a house, it's a tree is not enough detail for you to truly paint the right picture.
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You have to ask, what kind of tree? How big? What's going on in the surrounding? Are
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we fully zoomed in on the tree or is it a landscape mode? What color schemes do we use?
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You need to ask a lot more questions to get the full picture and to make sure that what
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you're painting is accurate with what they're living or what they have in mind. What you
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want to do is truly care. Caring is the number one mindset you need to apply and utilize
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to ask questions in a way that people want to give you the right answers, and want to
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give you as many answers as you need. You want to care. You want to care enough that
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you really want to understand, not just care enough to ask the question but care enough
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to desire understanding. You want to go deep and not stay at the surface
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level. An easy way to give you a practical mode to think like that is that you want to
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have to do as little as possible of interpreting what they're saying. When they say, “We
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just care about ease of use.” You don't want to interpret and go, “Oh ease of use,
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I know what they mean by that. They want something to be fast and the U.I. to be really flashy
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and cool and fancy,” and make interpretations of what that word means.
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Instead of doing that, you want to ask them, “Hey, what do you mean when you say ease
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of use? What about it needs to be easy? What about the experience needs to be easy? Do
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you have an example of an application or product or a service or something you're using that
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hits that requirement for you, something that would demonstrate to me, “What do you mean
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or what kind of products you're looking for when you're thinking about ease of use?
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See what I'm doing right now. I'm going deep.
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I'm not just staying at the surface, not just taking the first thing they say and run
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with it, not just take the first thing they say and interpret and make interpretations
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and extrapolations into what that might mean. I ask them, “What does that mean? Do you
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have an example of that for me, something that would make it more practical, more exemplify
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that mole? Rather than just taking your words, I want to find something in the real world
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I can look at that demonstrates that to me. When you ask these questions, don't just
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stay at the surface because it means you don't give a crap but actually go deep. I'll give
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you an example. The two questions I asked earlier where I said, “How many people would
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use this? What features or functionalities would be important?” let's rewind and
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do this right. If I ask a prospect, “Hey, how many people in your team would actually
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use our product?” the person goes, “I don't know, maybe four or five.” You go,
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“Cool, tell me about these people. Have they been around in the company for a long
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time? Have they just joined?” how long has it taken you to get this kind of a team? What's
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the workflow like? Are they all working from the same location or different ones?
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Let me ask you, moving forward in the next 12 months, is that team going to grow and
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if so, how and to how many? What's the dynamic between the different people? If they're
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all on the same team it's one thing but maybe there's a few people that are in sales
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or a few people that are in support? How do they interact? How do they communicate, any
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friction in the past, anything that we could do to anticipate the dynamics between the
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team and how it relates to our product? See how I'm going deep in trying to truly understand
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what that means? Why is it only five? How big is the entire company? “We're 5000
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people.” “Wow, how come only five of 5000 will use our product?
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Is it some kind of a task force, a special group? Is it a removed team that works on
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something special or is it a small pilot test run that you would scale to thousands? Tell
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me more about it. See how that information can completely change the picture of the information
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that you just got? Go deep, ask follow up questions to get to true understanding because
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once you understand someone you can effectively sell to them and effectively means get them
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to buy quick if it's the right thing. Then when they buy, get them to get success out
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of it and be happy and successful with your product or service.
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The other thing is that because most conversations – most of the time when people ask us questions
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they don't truly care about understanding. They only stay at the surface level. When
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you do, you stand out? Nothing is more powerful in building rapport and building a relationship
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than having someone feel truly understood by you. If somebody feels truly understood
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by you they will trust you. They will feel better about you and about their relationship
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with you? They will want to talk more to you and spend more time with you. We've all
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felt that there are certain people that we feel truly understood by.
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How do we feel about these people versus others that we think that they don't really get
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who we are? They just know superficially who we are and what we need but not really deeply.
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It makes a massive difference in the relationship you built. Last on the point of asking questions,
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some of you might now ask, this is all good. It's good to know but how do I do this?
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I'm not experienced in asking so many questions. I'm not experienced in truly going to the
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depth of the question and reaching understanding. How can I make sure that I do this right?
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The only way to get it right is to do it a lot and to practice.
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How about recording some of your prospecting calls or qualifying calls or qualifying conversations?
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How about practicing this with your team members and getting feedback from them? Hey, was this
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a smooth experience? Did I ask you the right question? Did you feel that I truly cared
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about you that I really wanted to understand you or did you just feel like I'm going
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through a list? Was it annoying in any way? How about practicing it and getting feedback
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from others and working on your craft to becoming a very powerful and effective question asker.
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Being good at asking questions and knowing how to ask the right questions can set you
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apart from all the rest in the market and can make a massive difference in how many
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deals you end up closing or not closing. I would suggest that you practice asking the
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right questions as much as you practice giving the best pitch or making the best demo presentation.
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I hope this was useful. If you have any questions that you want to ask, any follow up questions
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to this topic, send me an email to [email protected], write a comment, subscribe to a channel. Reach
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out, tweet to us, let this conversation move forward and let's add to the conversation
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and see if we get to a better and better understanding on how to become better at asking the right
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questions and how we can all work on our craft or the conversation and become better at it
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and more effective at it. All right, now go out there and get them
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