The First Three Sales Questions to Ask a Prospect

hi today we're going to talk about questions you should ask in specific we're going to talk about the first three questions that you should ask a sales prospect on your first meeting here's the thing 80 of your chance to win or lose a sale will be determined by the time you ask your last question so it's very important that you start off questioning in a very strong manner and in a manner that gets people into the sales call here's the problem you're confronting when you meet with a new person new prospect they are going to

naturally have their defenses up and when you start asking questions there's this little part in the back of their mind that's going to be sitting there thinking okay how could this answer be used against me for that reason it's very important that the first three questions that you ask your prospect are questions that are literally designed only as open-ended questions to gain information do not i repeat do not ask any question that could be tied to whatever it is you're selling in those first three questions if you do they're going to build their walls and

you're going to be trying to climb over those walls for the rest of the sales call so here are the first three questions that you should ask your prospect number one how did you come to be in this position here's the thing the number one thing that people like to talk about is themselves people love to tell their own stories so when you ask how did you come to be in this position you're inviting them please tell me your story tell me all about your career and what you have done that is great and then

sit back and shut up and listen don't use this time as a way to plan and plot what you're going to say next don't use this time to pick out a detail and go oh there's something i can use instead just sit there and look this is one of the few moments by the way in sales that i don't recommend taking notes i typically do not unless there's something really really important i typically do not take notes on this question i sit there and i listen with open interest as they tell me their story you

build a great report that way second question what is your favorite thing about this job and that's you know whether you're talking to somebody on the plant floor whether you're talking to somebody who owns the company what is your favorite thing about what you do number one again you're showing genuine interest in them and building great rapport number two and you may learn some things here that tell you a little bit about how they're rewarded how they like to spend their time things that could be really beneficial later to you in the selling process you're

going to learn some good stuff here once again listen openly to what they're saying now this is a question that 99.9 percent of the time has no downside the first one i've never had it had a downside this question i've had something funny happened once well it's kind of wasn't funny at the time i asked this question of a guy this is gosh 25 years ago as i was selling industrial in junction city kansas i was asked the plant manager i said so what's your favorite thing about this job and the guy sits there for

a minute and he responds not a damn thing his exact words folks and i thought maybe he was joking i just kind of bypassed it and i could see he was a little off for the rest of the uh the sales call but you know we had a good call i asked more questions and got a proposal opportunity uh called back two days later to arrange the next meeting and it turns out he had quit at the end of that day not kidding and i i can only imagine i don't know for sure but i

just wonder if he reflected on his job and said i'm out of here so most of the time that never happens though but it is good to understand what they like because that tells you how they like to spend their time on their job and that does give you an idea of how you might be able to solve some problems for third question why do your company's customers buy from you again this is a question that there's no reason for them to put up defenses about but you get to learn what's great about their company

what they do well what their customers perceive is very good from them now admittedly there is a little bit of a meta behind this question i'll tell you what it is unless you are selling to let's be honest walmart unless you're selling to somebody like walmart you're almost never going to hear because we have the cheapest price nobody ever brags on being the cheapest provider here's the thing whatever they tell you they're going to tell you what's great about their company they're not going to brag on lower price it is a little bit of a

bulwark later against the price objection because if they say they want the lowest price now you can come back later and say look your customers don't buy from you because of being the low price provider why do you want to buy from your vendors that way that's a little something to reserve but here's here's here's what's really important about these questions these questions are not questions that are going to cause a customer to put up their defenses and think in the back of my mind okay what am i saying that can be used against me

later these are questions that are going to ease a customer into the discovery process build some report open up gain some trust and that means that when you start asking the substantive questions that you're about to ask you'll probably get better answers so if you want better first appointments start your appointments with those three questions look forward to seeing how that works for you go ahead and leave me a comment and if this video has been helpful to you please like it share it subscribe to my channel i look forward to talking with you again

thank you you