The Art of Questioning

Learn to Ask the Right Kind of Questions to Uncover Needs
BEFORE You Tell Them All About Your Product.

Have you ever noticed while telling someone about your products or service how they have an disinterested stare? Does it sometimes seem like you are talking to a brick wall? Do you have a hard time captivating their attention?

Want to know a SECRET? Here it is… They seem disinterested because you haven’t identified the specific benefits that your product or service offers that will fill their specific needs.

So, before we get into the products, services, features, etc we must first go through a questioning phase to uncover their wants and their needs. This is one of the first things I teach my new team members because it can make or break your success. I’d like to provide a brief overview of the topic in this blog post.

There are several lines of questioning:

• Questioning people about why they called or contacted you
• Questions while talking with potential business builders
• Questions to ask while talking with potential customers about your products.

We will focus on potential customers and in this post.

Features versus Benefits:
Features are the details of the product:

• When was it developed?
• How does it work?
• What are its ingredients?
• The way we do the business.

Benefits involve showing them “What’s in it for them?” Benefits are all about how the product will improve their quality of life.

Benefit Words: Benefits are discussed with words that talk about “Results.” Here is a partial list:
This product will…

• Increase (your circulation, etc.)
• Improve (your energy level, etc)
• Enhance (your memory, etc)
• Eliminate your stress
• Save time and money
• Protect your health

Once you have identified a list of your product’s benefits you can design questions that will help you know which of the benefits they are most interested in knowing about. There are two types of questions: Closed questions and open questions.

Closed questions illicit people to give short answers… usually yes or no. You won’t gain much information from these kinds of questions. Here are some words that start off closed questions:

• Are
• Can
• Will
• Could
• Should
• Would

Open Questions start with:

• Who (will be using this product?)
• What (are some of your challenges and frustrations?)
• When (are you the most fatigued during the day?)
• Where (do you intend to use this product?)
• Why (BEWARE: This word often causes people to become defensive because when you use it you are questioning a decision they have made. It often makes people feel uncomfortable.)
• How (do you see yourself using this?)

ACTION STEPS: (Action steps are my way of getting new team members focused on how to immediately apply this training.)
• Make a list of your product’s benefits.
• Create an “open” question for each of the benefits.
• Then, use those open questions to determine which benefits the potential customer will be interested in.

I sincerely hope this post will help you to grow your business.