How to Ask Good Probing Questions

so whether you sell b2c business to consumer or b2b business to business this training is going to help you drastically all right so today i'm going to give you seven different questions that will trigger your prospect to go below the surface instead of staying surface level with you okay so i'm going to give you seven top questions to help you go below the surface that's going to trigger the prospect to want to open up more go below the surface and tell you what's really going on then i'm going to show you off of those seven

questions from their answers how to then clarify their answers and probe deeper so they feel more pain okay that builds more of a gap because the more pain you get them to feel the more gap you build from where they are compared to where they want to be the more likely they are going to purchase your solution because they want to run away from that pain and actually solve it and i actually have a white board vibe or i'm going to draw over i'm going to pull over here in a second first of all go

down to the bottom of this video hit the subscribe button that's probably important for you hit the subscribe button and to the right of that or maybe the left i don't know somewhere in there there's like a little bell that's your notifications button hit the notifications button as well so you get notified by youtube every time i post a new training video which i typically do two to four times a week all right so when let's start here seven questions all right i'm gonna have blake bring over the uh the thing over here in just

about two minutes two minutes all right all right so i'm going to give your preferences okay so let's start off here here's the first thing that we need to understand when we only ask what are called surface level questions okay you know what i'm talking about your prospect just so you understand psychologically will never open up to you and actually tell you the truth of what is really going on what the real problems are what the root cause of the problems and how those problems are affecting them and why won't they open up to you

it's because the questions you've been forced to learn by the gurus or maybe your company it's not your fault i was forced to learn them in the beginning the questions you've been taught to ask most of not all of them actually trigger the very sales resistance that you're trying to avoid and then what happens your prospect emotionally as you know shuts down okay and when they shut down what do they typically do at the end of that first call second call however long your sales process is whether you sell b to c or b to

b they say things like i need to think it over i need to get more quotes i need to keep looking at other vendors and companies i need to do more research this sounds good but it's not a good time for me call me back in a few months i'll get back to you for interested i need to talk with my spouse i need to talk with the board my business partners i need to talk with my uncle who's a financial advisor i need to talk with my aunt who lives in a van down by

the river right you're always going to get those objections because you couldn't get the prospect to open up and tell you the truth of what's really going on i'm not saying the surface of what's going on i'm saying below the surface of what's going on if we can't learn how to do that we're going to get all those objections consistently and we're going to lose sales that our clients who are in the same industry you're in are selling left and right like easy right and left-handed lay-ups if they're right-handed all right so let's do this

now when they do that what they do is they commoditize you and then you try to typically offer them some type of discount which most of them still won't go for that and then you end up losing them okay so that is something you want to avoid all right now how do you get your prospects let's skip a party i've actually made some notes for you so how to get your prospects to expand their answers for them to bring out more pain and emotion how do you get them to relive the pain and how do

you do that those are called expanded any pq probing questions make sure you write that down expanded any pq probing questions and then after you ask expanded probing questions you then have to clarify their answers and then probe even deeper so i'm going to give you some various examples of how to do that all right so this is the first one right this is a very easy one everybody should know this i'm going to start giving you some easy ones first and i'm going to give you some more ninja nepq expanded probing questions after that

so the first one is let's say the prospect tells you something maybe a problem they have and you would simply say hold on tell me tell me more about that when you said blank can you tell me more about that see that's an easy one that's a basic everybody should already know that good lord that's been around for 50 years right it's just a powerful way to get your prospect to expand their problems that they bring up from your questions now here's another one okay let's say that you're trying to find out the company's decision-making

process most sales people say well well besides you who would be involved in this decision and most people shut down because pretty much every sales person asking that same question once again you don't want to sound like everybody else that's tried to sell them for the last 10 15 20 years because they just think you like everybody else all right so you want to re-language it so this is called an npq lead-in phrase can you walk me through so write that down sally can you walk me through your company's decision-making process when it comes to

solving challenges like this can you walk me through your company's decision-making process when it comes to solving problems like this all right jayden johnson coaching of girls funded my second so that's solid and funny there you go justin i saw you comment the other day all right so let's go to the next one those are pretty basic i just gave you some basic ones right there right can you walk me through so even if the prospect says in the meeting that they are the only decision maker you obviously never take that at face value if

you sell b2b i can assure you that because there are other typically there are always other influencers they're going to influence that decision even if they can't make the decision all right so it sounds way better than saying are you the only decision maker all right you want to be able to navigate through the organization if you sell b2b now you wouldn't ask that question you sold b2c would make any sense in the four industries i sold in my 17-year career two of them were b to c two of them were b to b okay

you don't use that question for b to b all right now let me give you another example here all right so they say something like some type of issue or problem you want to them to expand that so this is another nepq lead-in phrase can you can you give me a specific example can you give me a specific example so i understand that better oh the company that was here they didn't ship the xyz widgets for six weeks okay hold on walk me back can you give me a specific example so i understand that better

well yeah you know three weeks ago see i'm helping him relive the pain now that's not the only thing we do that's the tip of the iceberg asking that expanded probing question after we do that we're then going to clarify off more of the pain they say and then we're going to probe again i'm going to show you that example in a minute all right we're just getting warmed up all right here's another one all right because pain is good for you and them because what does it do the pain the more pain you can

help them feel the more urgency they have to want to move away from that pain and actually solve that pain and get what they want all right now here's another one okay here's an ndpq lead in phrase okay can you can you go over with me can you go over with me what you might be looking for when considering a company just so i understand okay can you can you go over me or can you walk me through those are different ways you can ask that can you go over with me what you might be

looking for when choosing a company to work with can you go over me with me all right now let's talk about why we want to ask that okay that's more of a b2b question you wouldn't use that for b to b b to c it's a leading phrase helps your prospect uncover more in their mind of what they truly want and it also helps position your offer much more clear in their minds once you get to the presentation stage of the sales process with them all right now as we go i'm gonna get this even

better for you i'm just giving you a little warm up the more people that stay here at the end i'm just gonna give you more details at the end all right all right here's another lead in phrase walk me through okay write that down write that down i'm gonna go fast now walk me through walk me through is a phrase that allows your prospect to step by step explain how the organization makes decisions and allows you to know how to best position your company within that process and who to influence to win that account that

question you'd only use for b2b all right now or you can say walk me through what that means see if they say well we had x y z problem happen hold on walk me through what that means when you say blank can you walk me through what that means that's a clarifying question right there hold on when you say blank and you repeat back the problem or issue they had can you walk me through what that means okay can you walk me through the criteria used to make a decision on something like this see how

that works can you walk me through all right now here's another one this is a really good one describe for me okay that's another nepq lead-in phrase sally can you describe for me what you possibly might be looking for to see if we could help can you describe for me what you're what you're possibly looking for to see if we could help can you describe for me what you meant by that hold on john when you said blank can you describe for me what you meant by that see that's an ndpq clarifying question okay and

once again based off their answer we're going to clarify more and probe more which i'm going to give you some examples here in a second all right let me get oh i'm just warming up here got some more here that i'm going to give you these are actually really good all right okay here are a few more lead-in phrases can you unwrap that for me make sure you write that down can you unpack that for me can you go back a few pages for me okay so let me explain that sally can you unwrap that

for me so i have a better understanding john can you john hold on john you're losing me here unpack that for me a bit more okay john i'm not just if you could walk back here maybe go back a few pages for me so i can understand what you meant by that can you go back a few pages for me so i have a better background on when you said blank see what you mean okay justin wells do you use both b2b and b2c questions and selling to small businesses coaches well for small businesses you

could use some b2b i mean if they're just a solopreneur it's this it's just them probably not if you're more b2b with companies that are more like small cap mid cap large cap or maybe businesses that have at least a couple business owners you'd use several the b2b questions for sure okay b to c if you're just selling to like a coach i guess that's your industry you're more b b to c there's a little bit of a difference there for sure all right let's keep going can you walk go back a few pages unpack

that for me can you unwrap that for me oh i'm just being nice to you i'm giving you way more than i even told you i would okay now here's another nepq lead-in phrase can you explain to me okay can you can you explain to me in more detail just so i have a better understanding explain to me as another any pq lead-in phrase that allows your prospect to elaborate more on the problem they just mentioned to you and helps them feel more of the pain of that problem the root cause how it's impacting on

them then after they expand on their pain you're going to ask the following nepq probing questions to help them fill it even more did you have something they're saying something about spin what do you mean by spin they're saying spin is outdated they're saying it's a sales technique well this is definitely not spend selling i've taken 165 courses i can assure you this is not spin selling if you really take spin selling you wouldn't have these lead-in phrases because it doesn't come from spin selling period i mean i've read every book that they have i've

taken like five of their courses they don't even talk about this these people that are saying that probably read like half a book and they think it's something similar it's not consultative selling if we were practicing consultative selling i would have made like 10 percent of the income i made in my 17-year sales career i can assure you that whoever said that oh i love that i love the critics over there they're so smart making millions of dollars in commissions every year what would i know what would i know all right so after they say

that so i'm going to give you different examples all right so after they ex after they after they say oh well this happened and this happened okay you're then going to ask them these type of probing questions hold on wait wait a minute when you said blank how long has that been going on so when they tell you like oh it's been this problem and it's caused us to feel this way and like oh my gosh and blah blah okay and how long has that been going on for that's an nepq probing question how long

is that hold on how long has that been going for now are you paying attention to my tonality you don't say how long has that been going on for george tonality is important okay my background's human behavior i might understand a little bit about this stuff all right does anybody did anybody major in human behavior on here anybody i don't see any hands anybody major in human behavior okay i'm not i'm not understand all right so hold on how long has that been going on for see my tonality my my feature like my body language

even if i'm on the phone i'm still saying the same thing oh and how how long has that been going on for like i'm acting confused oh geez that's been going on for probably 18 months okay so help me understand you you've been having the same problem for the last 18 months has that has that had a impact on you what did i just do there did you hear my tone did you see how my body moved in to show empathy these are things we have to learn if you want to make hundreds of thousands

of dollars a year in commissions if not more oh okay so you've been having this problem repeat the problem back whatever it is okay for the last 18 months has that has that had a impact on you okay now if you're talking to a business has that had a impact on the business has that had a impact on you notice you slowed down your tone if you said so you've been having this problem for the last 18 months george has that had an impact on you no not really it's all how you ask the question

okay i can ask it two different ways and i'm gonna get a two different types of reaction okay you can't sound like a scripted robot very important all right now the prospect a lot of times will say this when when you ask that i'm going to go to the next one here okay they'll be like oh you have no idea well in what way though see how i'm probing deeper this is the part here that most sales people miss they don't know how to they'll ask one probing question they'll answer it and they're like okay

and then they're like okay what's next on my script ask oh well george let me ask you this and they get the prospect to say surface up they're not building enough urgency or gap because they don't know where to probe okay i'm just giving you a little tip of the iceberg i'm giving you a little golden i'm getting a little hors d'oeuvre today a little nibble compared to what our clients go through in our virtual training courses and group trainings all right well hold on in what way though oh well in this way and that

way see i'm helping him relive the pain even more all right all right let's keep going got a few more things i'm going to give to just being mr nice guy over here today we have one human psychology and psychophysiology person i love that person that's a good person okay start to understand that mixed in with really good sales skills that work with human behavior you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year if not more once you learn any pq all right so let's go over the expanded probing questions the lead in phrases

i want you to write these down very quickly walk me through i'm not practicing tonality here walk me through what you mean by that tell me more about whatever that is tell me more hold on tell me more about that can you give me an example okay can you share with me can you share with me describe for me now you could also say can you describe for me can you share with me hold on tell me more when you said okay now you don't want to say can you can you can use 17 times

because that's going to sound like a technique you have to mix that up all right hold on unwrap that for me you're losing me unwrap that for me so i have a better understanding okay i'm not understanding can you unwrap that for me a little bit so i have a better background john i i i'm not understanding what you meant can you unwrap that for me so i have a better background on what you meant unwrap that for me did you write that down all right let me give you some more unpack that for me

so instead of unwrap you're unpacking oh sally um can you unpack that for me a bit so i understand more okay explain to me so i know how that affects you can you explain that to me a bit more so i know how that affects you when that happens okay can you go back a few pages for me john whoa whoa whoa you're losing me you're on page 15 i'm still back on page three can you go back a few pages for me never heard that one have you okay can you go back a few

pages from me when you said okay see how that works all right i'm being mr nice guy today all right let's keep going now these questions i'm going to show you a few more these questions show your prospects that you are what that you are there for them that you want to hear their pain you not only want to hear their pain but you want them to do what hear their pain because you want them to relive the experience of what the pain has done to them because they don't have the problem resolved yet now

what is the most intense human emotion it's pain without pain without the gap from where they are compared to where they want to be you cannot tell them what their problems are you cannot tell them what the gap is because if you do you're biased you're the salesperson it's going to go in one ear out the other you have to ask the right questions that get them to expand the pain and tell the pain to themselves because if they tell themselves what's true and their pain is that more persuasive than you telling them their problem

i think you know the answer i would hope you know the answer by now okay now unless you so let me clarify this without pulling out their pain from the prospect with any pq questions your prospects will keep living that pain doing what they've always done staying in the status quo never solving their problem that's up to you as the sales person learn those skills so you allow them to overcome their own fears their own issues in their mind that's holding them back from solving these problems and getting them where they want to go and

that's in any industry we train 158 industries according to forbes says forbes magazine said there's 158 industries they just came out that now there's subsets of each industry we train in all of them so it doesn't matter what industry you're in okay it's all the same as long as you're selling to a human being that has problems and or emotional needs and your solution solves those okay now i'm going to give you a few more examples of what are called napq clarifying and probing questions that need to be asked after the lead in phrases in

the expanded probing questions if you want to sell even more these are very important to get your prospect to go under the surface with their answers and tell you what's really going on okay because the questions help you clarify what your prospect is saying but more importantly it triggers your prospect to clarify their real problems and where they want to go okay now they also help you probe deeper to pull out their emotions you're getting them into their emotional state tony robbins talks a lot about that tony understands human behavior if we can't get them

to their emotional state it's very hard for them to change their situation okay also you know i did a keynote here a week ago for a large insurance company they had about 6 000 agents just there in that room i think they have about 12 or 13 000 agents and in that keynote i said look all selling is is change that's all selling is it's about change one thing only okay so whether the prospect wants something new or they're moving away from pain it's all about change here's your problem though human beings don't like change

so all sales is change yet human beings don't like change even though we say we do that's what you're going up against so if you can't get them into their emotional state they don't want to change they have too much fear and that's why you get so many objections at the end i want to think it over now is not a good time i need to keep looking around i need more quotes i need more proposals i need to do more research that's exactly why because you don't understand how to get them to their emotional

state okay how to clarify and probe and take them through that sales process with an apq now here's some few clarifying questions joey that was awesome yeah there you go oh joey you were at the keynote well there you go you must be a member of quality hold on what do you mean by that exactly see that's just a basic clarifying question but very powerful 99 of sales people can't even ask that hold on what do you mean john when you say blank what did you mean by that exactly now let's say they give you

some type of emotional word okay they're like i'm so frustrated i'm so annoyed when that happens oh my gosh it causes so much stress you can say hold on what do you mean by stress or hold on what do you mean by annoyed or you can simply just repeat back the emotional word i want you to try this when your spouse says oh i'm so stressed stressed oh you have no idea and they're going to go off i'm seriously any type of emotion world frustrated stressed concerned uh annoyed stressed any of those words there's a

lot more emotional words any time so a prospect says an emotional word i want you to repeat back that one word stressed annoyed frustrated concerned okay and watch other oh my gosh i have so much concern very powerful okay probing statement all right hold on when you say stress how do you mean exactly just another way to do it or what did you mean by you feel frustrated hold on what did you mean by annoyed see it's just other ways to do that all right how long has that been going on for see we're right

back to that oh hold that stress oh the stress is blah blah blah blah oh how how long is that going on how long has it been going on so that's been so you've had the stress the last three months has that has that had a impact on you see i'm leaning in i'm verbal pausing if i'm like so you've had the stress for three months john has that had an impact on you uh yeah it's not that bad okay hold on you so you've been having this stress the last three months has that has

that had a impact on you oh my see different it forces them to think deeper by my verbal pausing ability all right so here's some more clarified questions hold on what's causing that issue can you walk hold on when you say blank what's cause an issue what's causing this to happen okay what's prompting you to look into changing this now though okay but what's prompting you to look at changing this now rather than pushing it down the road like unsuccessful people would nobody wants to be unsuccessful depends on what you sell that that question you

only use in certain industries can i ask what originally led you to this decision in the first place can i ask whoa whoa i lost my pin can i ask what originally led you to that decision in the first place okay but why is it important for you to look at changing this now rather than pushing it down the road well jeremy the reason why we need to do it now is because of blah blah blah see how we do that all right folks hopefully i gave you enough i said i was going to give

you seven expanded probing questions how many did we give them i think i gave like 12 different expanded probing questions lead in phrases nepq leading phrases probing questions clarifying questions and that is just like the tip of the iceberg i just gave you little little nibbles like little fish like the little goldfish you put in the little nibbles you know they're just nibbling around give you the little nibbles now if you're wanting to learn how to sell more of your products and services than you are now join our free facebook group go to www.salesrevolution.pro we

should have a link on here somewhere sales revolution dot pro right when you join the sales revolution dot pro facebook group because we've got thousands of entrepreneurs and there are thousands of sales people like you thousands of coaches consultants executives in there that want to sell more right when you join check your dms because we're going to message you some of my team is going to message you a free training called the nepq 101 mini course it's going to give you a list of different questions and phrases you can use in any sales situation that

alone is going to help you sell more than what you're doing now and we go live in the facebook group about three to four times a week with different subject matter trainings different q and a's different client interviews that will also help you sell more join the facebook group sales revolution dot pro see you there you