What questions should we ask in an early- stage meeting with a buyer?

Remember the buyer owes you nothing, and that includes answers to your questions. As a salesperson, you have to earn the right to ask

questions and so you must build the trust that will encourage buyers to answer freely and in detail.

Focus more in early meetings on how you can help and, in particular, on the information you can share, rather than the information that you want. A salesperson who shows up at a meeting with a standard product-

led sales pitch and a list of questions to determine needs and facilitate his / her sales process pre-qualification will be seen by buyers as self-serving and worthy of being left waiting in the hall.

The objective of a first meeting should be to share some useful information with the buyer – for example, an insight into what his / her counterparts or competitors are doing, the challenges they are facing and the results they are achieving.

After all, that is the most powerful way of communicating the benefits of

your solution. Here is an example:

‘We have worked with A, B and C to achieve X, Y and Z and, based

on these projects, we have … noticed an important trend …

identified a range of key success factors … identified a number of

factors that are often overlooked … employed a new way of …

achieved some surprising results… etc.’

So, the questions you ask in the meeting logically relate to that insight shared, to those challenges, benefits and trends discussed. For example:

• Do you think this (insight) is relevant? Have you seen this trend yourself?

• Who does it affect in your business? How does it affect them?

• Is this something that you would be interested in exploring a little more? What aspects of it in particular?

• How important do you think this could be? Do you think it could be a priority? For when?

• Other companies have faced challenges in implementing (budget, time, other priorities, etc.). Do you think these would apply here?

• Has this issue been examined before? If ‘Yes’, what was the outcome? If ‘No’, is there a reason why this issue has not been

addressed before?

• What would you like to do next? Is there anybody else in your organisation that would be interested?

Posted by Ray Collis on 8:37 pm. Filed under During The Meeting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry