#268: Master the Power of Questions in Sales
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:01]:
In this episode, you'll learn how asking the right questions can help you differentiate the sales conversation, and you'll learn the importance of asking questions to learn not to interrogate. Dave, we're back for another episode of the how to sell podcast. And this week, we're diving straight into the importance of questions. It's a topic that we it keeps getting asked. We keep talking about it with many people in our community. So we thought, you know what? After last week's session in our community, let's talk about it. Let's jump in a podcast. Let's have a chat.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:35]:
So let's dive right in.
David Fastuca [00:00:37]:
Let's do it, Lui. It's always a great topic. It's, you know, as a parent, we both are we probably get thrown 4,000 questions per per minute at my household at the moment. So I'd like to dive into this one a lot more deeper, especially on the sales front. So lead us away, mate.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:53]:
Yeah. It's interesting. Right? Because I think, if you think about the sales process, the sales process has been broken down into intersections. Right? So you have the book a meeting, and then you have a discovery call, and then from discovery, you present a proposal. And we kinda think of that there's a step in which you're gonna be asking questions. There's a step of discovery. But, unfortunately, it doesn't happen like that in the in in the real world. I wish it was that easy.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:23]:
You know, you talk to someone, you say, let's have a meeting, then let's have a discovery call, present me what you're thinking, and then let's discuss and move forward. Right? Because there's so many different people involved, sometimes it takes multiple meetings before you can even get your proposal. The reality is you're going to have to be asking questions throughout the entire sales conversation. Yeah? And what's really important is that the questions that we need to ask or the questions that we should be asking, again, depending on the stage in the sales process, but questions ultimately will help you not just understand or learn a bit more about the people you're dealing with, but in some cases it'll help your buyer recognize things they haven't thought about. Right? So questions can be a really powerful way to build rapport, to help progress opportunities, to get them thinking about their state of play in a way they haven't sort of considered.
David Fastuca [00:02:20]:
I'm really keen on this one, Louis. Look, how do you structure well, let let's tackle the discovery call. So you've either emailed me, cold called me, whatever it is, I'm I'm intrigued by what you have to offer me. I say, cool. Let's book a time to chat. We're on the call. Lead me through, you know, how are you kicking this off?
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:40]:
And I think, again, this is why research becomes a bit of a superpower for us. Right? So if you are meeting with somebody and you know that, and we'll we'll we'll use an example here. We know that the person's just started in a in a new role. Right? So we've used a trigger event. We've looked at Sales Navigator. We've gone, great. Great. This person just starting the role.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:03:00]:
I'm gonna reach out. Book a meeting about x, and you've done it. So fantastic. You've successfully leveraged intent data or whatever, and you've booked this meeting. You don't just walk into the meeting with some generic questions. You try to tailor it based on the fact that they've just started a new role. And, potentially, it's it's what we call a warm up question. It could be just as simple as, hey, you know, thanks for booking in a meeting.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:03:24]:
We'd love to know, just before we jump into today's meeting, we'd love to know what particular aspect, of the role or the company culture really stood out for you most when you were looking at this opportunity? Because it'll give you a sense of, a, you're not asking a massive big picture question here because you've also gotta earn the right, but it'll help deflate some of that relationship tension, and it'll get the buyer talking about themselves. Right? It might give you insight into their values, what's important to them, from a culture perspective. It also might give you an insight into why they left their previous company. And so this is why we I want you to think about potentially having some warm up questions to start with, again, to lower that relationship tension. Because if there is high relationship tension, it means there's little or no trust. It's very hard to then move into the zone of influence, Dave, to start asking some big picture questions about their business and the way it's operating, and some of the gaps, and some of the goals. Yeah?
David Fastuca [00:04:26]:
No. I like that. Right? So you've tackled the approach where, you know, someone's changed roles and there was that trigger event, which you reached out to them, probably. Does the initial questioning change whether it's an inbound versus an outbound, meeting? Meaning that, you know, they booked a time without you speaking to them on your calendar versus you reaching out to them direct.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:48]:
Absolutely. And there's I've I've advocated this for a long time, Dave, and I've done this across multiple campaigns, multiple businesses, multiple industries, consumer and business to business. But I think the one mistake a lot of people make when they have an inbound lead, for example, they assume the person is ready to buy, and they are essentially responding to them. So what questions would you like to know about our product or service? It's actually the comp it's the total wrong approach. What we should be defining is the motivation behind their inquiry. Right? And I like to ask it as as simple as that. What's motivated you to reach out to us today? Or what motivated you to reach out to us to learn more about x? And it's interesting when you ask that question, how much information they start to deliver, they start to give back. My 3 magic questions for an inbound lead are, what's motivated you to inquire, how long have you been considering, and what's prompted you to take action today?
David Fastuca [00:05:43]:
Mhmm.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:44]:
And in that as well, there's a pass based question. Yeah? It's asking him, where have you come from? Like, how long have you been considering x? And what's prompted you to take action now? It gives you that compelling reason. This is what's happened in their business. Or you could you could change a little bit of what's happened in your business for this to become a priority today. So you can change the wording a little bit around that question. But before I can start talking about my product or service, I've got to understand the driver behind the motivation. Yeah? It's actually really important, Dave. And and a lot of I've audited 100 and 100 of calls, probably 1,000 now, again, across both b to c and b to b sectors.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:06:27]:
It's it blows my mind how many people don't ask that at the start. They say, you know, how can I help you? Or, what information would you like to learn about us? Versus, let me understand where you're at. What's happening with you? And then once I I learn that, I can sort of then start to ask a few more questions before I can position exactly what we've got to offer. So fundamentally, from an inbound perspective, we're trying to understand the driver. From an outbound perspective, we're trying to warm them up a little bit to a point where, again, that we lower that relationship tension, we're in that zone of influence, And we can start to ask some questions about their current state, where they've come from. I'm a big believer in past state questions. In fact, there's some data that Paul Cherry talks about, who is an incredible author from Questions That Sell, that only 10% of the questions that people ask are past based. Right? 80% are current state.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:23]:
Now current state questions are important, Dave. They're tell me a bit about how you manage x process. What are some of the problems x process is having on your business? Like, they're important questions. Yeah?
David Fastuca [00:07:34]:
You see the lay of the land, where they are now.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:36]:
Yeah. But current state, essentially, it it's it's today. They're not buying today. Yes. They need to they need to tell you, is there a problem they're looking to potentially rectify? Is the problem big enough to rectify as well? But they're buying tomorrow. So they're buying a future state. Yeah? And the future state is why they take action. Because the future state, there has to be enough value and enough opportunity that triggers them to say, you know what? I do wanna take this leap.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:08:10]:
I do wanna go through the pain of change to get to this new state. Right? So current state questions are absolutely important, but we shouldn't we shouldn't forget the importance of past based questions, you know. And and and let me walk you through some simple past based questions as well. Yeah? So past based questions would be, you know, walk me through how you handled a similar challenge, and how did you and your team go about managing that that challenge? How did you go about selecting a provider to help you? You know, that gives you an indication of their buying process. If you could go back and and do that project again, what would you do differently? Because that could give you an indication of some of the problems that they encountered. Right? It could maybe help you determine that they might be conditioned a certain way in the in the way in which they make decisions now. Right? Like, how did you how did you obtain the allocated budget and resources to tackle that project? Yeah? That's a like a commercial based question. Right? So it's important to sort of go back and ask some some questions about where they've come from.
David Fastuca [00:09:20]:
Pardon the interruption, but I just want to let you know about a special course that Luigi and I have put together that we've given away for free. It's a sales OS 5 part email course. To get access, just visit growforum.i0forward/newsletter and sign up today. So I wanna remind that I'll be back there. So you're advocating to obviously control the conversation and not just leave it up to them to say, you know, what do you wanna what do you wanna learn? You're guiding, you're guiding them along the journey Yep. Through your questioning. Do you have is there a magic number of the right amount of questions to ask? How many? You know, presuming this is a 30 to 45 minute discovery call
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:04]:
Yeah.
David Fastuca [00:10:05]:
And you don't want it to feel make it feel like an interrogation. Right? So is there a magic number, or how do you go by determining what is the right amount?
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:14]:
That's funny, Dave. That's that's the most commonly asked question I get from sellers and people that I coach when it comes to questioning. Like, how many what's the magic number? And the and the reality is there is no magic number. What it is, it's around you you shouldn't really have 10 to 20 questions to ask someone because that will sound like an interrogation. You'll be just pumping them with questions. Right? They'll be like, oh my god, I'm just responding and responding and responding. This is where the consultative methodology kicks in. Right? I ask a question.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:42]:
I acknowledge your response by showing them whether if it's face to face. I'm I'm visually, you know, nodding my head. I'm saying thank you for sharing. I'm confirming what I'm hearing, and potentially I'm drilling down further. So if you have like sort of 4 or 5 really good questions, and then you have some drill downs, you'd be surprised how much information that you can actually capture. And then by confirming, confirming becomes your secret weapon. Yeah? Because by confirming and repeating what you hear, and then drilling down further, all of a sudden you really get an expanded response. Right? And the again, often the challenge in the sales process is the minute we, as salespeople, hear, oh, there's a problem.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:11:29]:
I gotta start selling my solution. Like, the minute I there's even a little slightest slightest indication that they have something that I could fix, bang, I start going into solutioning. Oh, cool. So thanks for sharing it that you got this problem. Let me tell you how we can fix this problem. Right?
David Fastuca [00:11:46]:
I'm gonna stop you there. So do do you when you hear that, because it is bloody hard to not go into selling mode. Right? When you go, well, here's my opportunity. Are you demoing or showcasing how you can solve or potentially help them in this first call, or are you saving that for another call? Because we get asked a lot of times, you know, when do I demo? And because the demo yourself could take quite a long time. Right? Or talk about your service.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:12:14]:
I hate the response depends, but, Dave, again, if they've if you've picked up that there is a problem, the first thing we've gotta do is try to define and this is what we've gotta be in the back of our minds, ask ourselves, like, okay. They've indicated this is a problem, but I need to determine is this big enough is this problem big enough that they actually really wanna tackle it? Like, businesses have problems everywhere, but some businesses know that, you know what? I know it's a problem, but I just don't have the bandwidth to tackle it right now. Or that problem, in comparison to another problem, the other problem's a greater level of priority for us. So before even thinking about presenting or start to push your own agenda, try to drill down a bit. Try to say, look, thanks for sharing. Appreciate, you you opening up about x. Do you mind me asking? Go deeper. Right? Describe the impact it's having across other areas of the business.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:13:09]:
If you could actually fix that problem, like, what would it mean for your customers? What would it mean for retention? What would it mean for market share? Right? Start to go a bit deeper because, potentially, they might only be looking at that problem on the surface as well. And when you start going a bit deeper, they might start to see that actually this problem is having a greater impact than what I initially thought. And that's where the power of questions come in, Dave, because there's an the different types of needs that we determine during a sales conversation, there's an obvious need. Right? Yeah. You know what? Customer churn, it's an obvious need. I've got a churn issue. But I've got other problems as well, and churn's an issue. But then there's an emerging issue.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:13:51]:
Okay. I didn't realize that churn's happening because of x, because of x experience. Then there's the unrecognized need. Wow. This is happening in my business and I didn't even know it was happening And that's what's potentially impacting churn and something else. So that's what questions allow you to do. Questions allow you to get the the buyer in a zone of thinking, and potentially thinking outside of that little tunnel that they could be looking at things through. Because the buyer gets sometimes We do it all the time.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:25]:
We get stuck in our own head. We We're in our own world environment. Right? And we sometimes can't see outside of that. And one of our good friends, Dave Mark, always says, it's You gotta try to get yourself out of that that zone and into a 40,000 foot zone. Right? You gotta try to lift yourself up. Because when you can lift yourself up, you see it from a completely different perspective. That's the power and the impact of asking really good questions. It allows the buyer to move outside of that zone.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:03]:
Now, there's a caveat on this as well, Dave. Don't ask a potentially mid level individual. Right? A really strategic
David Fastuca [00:15:15]:
Go go go a bit deeper there.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:17]:
What do
David Fastuca [00:15:17]:
you what do you mean by that?
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:18]:
So you're dealing with, say, a head of. Okay?
David Fastuca [00:15:20]:
Yep. Head of marketing Head of marketing. Sales, whatever.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:23]:
Now the head of marketing might report into the CMO. Now, potentially, the head of marketing, if you ask them very strategic questions, he might not have any responsibility over the strategy. Yeah? He might not even have a view over acquisition, budget allocation, right, whatever, right? He might he or she potentially is only seeing a certain layer of the business. And again, this is the risk, and this is why you've gotta be thoughtful and define where they're at in the org structure to think what are the type of questions that I should be asking. Again, it could be they could be reporting into the head of. It could be marketing manager that reports to the head of marketing, and the head of marketing reports to the chief marketing officer. Right? Ask questions that are relevant to the person you're dealing and on the flip side, if you're dealing with the CMO, be mindful not to ask questions that to your layered questions that are really sort of in the weeds question, because a CMO might be going, I have no clue how they manage EDMs. Right? That's not my remnant.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:16:38]:
I've got a EDM manager. I've got a marketing person, marketing coordinator. They're responsible for doing x. I don't know how they do their posts. Yeah? And, again, it depends on the size of the business. Are they enterprise? Are they mid market? Are they SMB? Because if it's SMB, most case, it's only 1 or 2 people in that business that's doing all the marketing.
David Fastuca [00:16:57]:
Yeah. So you can ask that question, but if it's a lot larger, you can't.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:17:01]:
And, again, this is where us as salespeople, we need to be thinking. We, 1st and foremost, need to get out of the weeds, think strategy, go, right. Let me look at the org structure, the size of the entity, the type of entity, and then who am I dealing with? Great. What are the questions that I could be asking of this person? And that's why preparation you've heard me say this before, Dave. Preparation is the foundation of success. Right? If I just rock up to this meeting, no preparation, no thought, and just ask my 5 or 6 go to questions because I'm an I'm an expert, you know, I'm not preparing myself for success. Yeah? And this is the elite mindset that we need to take into every opportunity. The elite mindset is if you are that elite athlete like Zlatan, right, or for those that are can't can't see, I've got a couple of incredible athletes, Roberto Budjor and Zlatan Mebihirovich, guests on our show, if you are that elite, the thing that make them so elite is they train.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:18:02]:
They're relentless in their training, and they prepare before a big game. So they're winning before they they actually they actually play the game. Right? It's just like what we're doing in sales. If we don't take the time to think about the types of questions and think about the audience we're engaging with and maybe do a bit of research on the company and where they've come from in the acquisitions, etcetera, then we are not doing ourselves. We're not enabling us to be lucky. Right? We're not creating that luck for ourselves. So even though this session today is about the types of questions that you could ask, fundamentally, it's a it's a much more holistic approach. Yeah? So I just wanna go back a step as well, right, just to think about some past based questions.
Luigi Prestinenzi [00:18:47]:
Looking back, walking through what prompted you to pursue this particular strategy or solution in the past, how did you approach your budget allocation? Do you mind me asking, was that a a project that you had budget a budget already allocated, or did you go off and have to seek that budget? Right? Again, that depending on the level of relationship. If you got if you've got a really strong champion, you can ask that type of question. So again, that's just getting you thinking about the type of where they've come from, what's happening in their business, how do they make decisions. Because, again, that could that should start to help you develop your action plan to move forward. Yeah?
