I absolutely love sales. It totally lifts my spirit, because it is the first step to change in a person’s life.
Without the sale, nothing happens.
The prospects just sit in their prison cells, never realizing that the life they want is attainable, if they’d just shift their perspective and reach outside their bars.
Fortunately, they have you.
Clarity Brings Urgency
When you’re successful during a discovery conversation with a prospective client, you’ve brought them to clarity about their situation, which, in turn, gives them the urgency to change.
Let me say that again, with clarity comes the urgency to change.
Part of the reason that people stay stuck is they’ve pushed their problem so far into the future that they can’t see it. One day, they’ll make enough money to take vacations. One day.
The problem is, “one day” will never come. Your prospects will stay stuck until they finally realize that there is only now.
If they want to increase their income, if they want the life of their dreams, now is the time to act.
To help guide them to that clarity, which, again, they have to realize for themselves, you want to ask them four simple questions. Here are the first two:
Question 1
The first question you ask during the discovery conversation with a prospect is some version of “What are you looking to accomplish?” It’s plain, simple and direct.
You do want to tailor that question to your specific business, product or service. For example, if you’re a financial planner, it makes sense to ask, “How much money do you want to make?”
Regardless of the wording you choose, after you ask the question, be quiet. Just listen, and they will tell you what you need to know about them.
Question 2
Next, you want to ask, “What is the biggest problem in your business (or life) right now?”
With this question, you’re finding out what they want and need, but, more important, they’re beginning to get clear about their problem.
After you ask the question, again, don’t say a word. Let them tell you what they think their problem is.
If you think that they’re incorrect about the nature of their problem, don’t tell them that or argue with them, because that does no good.
In fact, almost everyone’s answers to one or more of these questions will be wrong. That doesn’t matter.
What matters is that they’re starting to get clear in their minds that they have a problem, and they’re bringing that problem from some nebulous future into the present, where they can finally face it.
Look at it this way, if you have to tell them what their problem is, they haven’t accepted it yet in their mind.
And if they haven’t accepted it yet, if they’re saying, “I want to think about it” they still have unanswered questions. And, if that’s the case, there’s no way they’re moving forward.
In order to bring them to clarity and urgency and clinch the sale, you need to ask them two more questions. You’ll find those here next time.
