A Busy Executive’s Guide to Effective Customer Conversations

Serving with Questions

How does it serve people to ask questions? I post on LinkedIn about using questions to serve, sell and close clients. These are skills that busy executives need.

Digging the Ditch

I learned about the ditch while working in New York. Serving is showing people the need to improve their lives. You won’t sell solutions to minor problems. You must uncover pains.

This is uncomfortable for buyers. Serving means non-confrontational questioning that makes people uneasy. This is digging the ditch.

As buyers discuss each level of a problem, they form an image of the solution. Once they reveal the root cause, they want to escape. Having dug the ditch with them, you position a product as the way to climb out.

The Right Questions

Salespeople must ask the right questions. Imagine you're seated at a restaurant next to a young family. A child isn't eating, and a parent asks why.

“I’m not hungry” comes the reply.

“You will be later” the parent says, before returning to their conversation.

How often do we file and forget client feedback and return to pressing internal matters? We miss an opportunity to impress.

Now consider the cause of the child’s lack of appetite. Perhaps there is an issue at school worrying them. Maybe they are ill, and possibly the food is off or they are allergic. Each situation requires a different solution. Pitch the wrong one and your sale will fail.

When serving, we ask questions to uncover the root cause of pain. Our business becomes sharing the solution. While children will often eat later, in business there may not be a later time. We must not leave an unresolved problem hanging.

I realised that when a buyer thanks me for my time and says they’ll think it over, I hadn't done enough. I found a problem and missed the root cause. The resulting lack of urgency cost me sales. I needed a new framework.

Many companies ask their clients questions. The net promoter score is a popular survey that asks for a ranking from zero to ten. Seven is a common answer, which is neither good nor bad.

Now is the time to learn more. Yet, it’s those giving low scores who most often fill in the box. Only gathering these comments is unproductive.

Often feedback requires more information. Always ask for contact details and follow up. Seek out and reply to those who comment about products on social media.

The Important Question

If you have a lot of clients, then automate questions, for instance with a survey. With fewer clients, face-to-face is better. The questions to ask are crucial.

“How often did you use the copy / paste icon?” reveals far more than,

“How did you get on with the software?”

The purpose of questions is to have the respondent form a clear image of the benefit you provide. Compounding questions confuse this imagery.

“What was your favourite feature and would you recommend it to a friend?” are two different questions. Ask them one at a time.

The most important question to ask is the one that moves to the next stage of the process. Do not finish a meeting until there is a commitment to take the next step. Even a tentative date is better than endless waiting for potential buyers to get back to you.

Those starting out in sales fear that asking too many questions might put buyers off. For sure, asking how a business operates and what people do reveals a lack of research. Yet genuine interest in helping buyers is a conversation they're eager to have.

Understanding my product as solving a pressing problem won me my next promotion.

Questions to Ask

1. Have I researched the challenges my buyers face?

2. Have I prepared questions that guide them to reveal more?

3. Do I have a consistent method to record and follow up feedback?

I’m Simon Maughan and I write The Profit Elevator as a guide for B2B firms seeking faster growth. The use of questions is a theme throughout The P.R.O.F.I.T. Through Process Planner I show to busy executives.

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