Imagine that you have the right marketing message for the right audience, your have sorted out your time mastery so that you have got time to market your business, and you have positioned yourself in the market place as the go to person in your industry, and now you are getting out there by working your plan, and you are getting a lot of interest. If you don't know how to close the sale, you don't know how to turn prospects into clients, then it's all been for nothing.
By building on your marketing message and positioning yourself as the go to person, your prospects will start to pre-qualify themselves and then all you need to do is just nudge them to get them to close themselves. You do this by asking the prospect questions that get them thinking about their situation.
Asking quality questions and really listening to the answers are in my book two of the most important skills you need to master in order to motivate people into action.
When we ask the right questions, we encourage people to have their own insights, to have their own aha moments. If we want the other person to take action, then asking questions is the only way to encourage this.
Why should we use questions?
Questioning is useful in all of the following cases and more:-
· Gathering information we might not have gotten otherwise
· Developing rapport
· Encouraging the person to go deeper inside to help clarify what the real issue is
· Helping them to recognise their emotions
· Encouraging them to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of a situation
· Helping them to hear what they need to hear
· Keeping them focused - drawing their attention gently back to their objective
How to ask the best questions
There are no right or wrong questions. However, the following will help you to ask useful questions:-
· Staying in the present - don't try to anticipate what their answer may be. Make sure that you are actively listening to them when they give you the answer.
· Listen without judgment - the most important thing is that their answer is accepted by you as being true for them and that you move on. They may otherwise start to tell you what they think you want to hear and not what they are really thinking and feeling.
· Don't be attached to the outcome - like with staying in the present, you have to ensure that you don't place getting the right answer to you, over the importance of hearing what the right answer is for them.
· Staying focused on asking open questions - questions such as who, what, were and how are all open questions. These will give you more information in the answers that you receive than closed questions such as did, are, and can which are more likely to just produce a yes or no answer.
· Stay curious - our natural state is to be curious. Remember when you were a child. Almost every other word was a question as we explored the world around us. We almost unlearn our natural state of asking questions.
Repeat their answers back to them in summary, using their words. Now you are ready to recommend your solution.
It is so simple and it respects you and it respects the prospect.
They will want to work with you because they feel understood and heard and realise that you they are not being pushed into a corner, they are being pulled towards you, and your solution to their problem.
