Identifying Customer Needs: Key Questions to Ask for More Sales

All about Problem Solving

Effective selling is all about solving problems. If you size up your customer properly, and properly sell the product and its benefits to them, (i.e., solve their problem), then you've won half the battle already. You have to get organized, approach your potential customers and ask them questions that will help both you as the sales person and the customer. The questions that you need to ask the customer have to be the right questions and give you answers - and after asking the questions you have to listen carefully. If you listen to your customers, they will give you the information you need to help them solve their problem and give them what they are looking for in a product or service.

But remember - most of the time, customers don't know what they want and do not know what their problems are. This means they don't really know what they are looking for, or that they even need a particular product. This is where you as a salesperson come in, armed with problem defining questions that will let the customer know that they do indeed need a particular product or service and that yours is the right one to purchase.

Key Questions

There are 8 key questions that are fundamental in identifying customer needs. These are:

1. What exactly is the business problem the customer is facing? This involves finding out the problem by understanding and analyzing the market.
2. What is the duration of the problem? Is the problem a short term or long term problem?
3. What are the consequences if the problem persists? This includes what will happen if the problem is not identified and dealt with.
4. What steps have been taken to tackle the problem?
5. If certain measures were taken to deal with the problem, what has been the result?
6. What is the cost to deal with this problem? This is where you tell the customer how much they would benefit financially if they were using your company's products.
7. What budget is available to fix the problems?
8. Who is the person involved in the decision-making and how the decision to purchase will be made?

Once the prospective customer has answered these questions to the best of their ability, can you move forward and offer them the most cost effective products or services.

Ask For the Order

This may seem very obvious, but not everyone does it, either because they are too shy or are waiting for the customer to take the initiative. Asking for the order may seem like the most important question and you may feel that it should be at the top of the list of 8 key questions. But it is only after you know the problem at hand from the customer's perspective and have the answer to solving the problem with your company's products or services, that you can ask them for the order.

Asking for the order is the key to closing the sale, but you can only close the sale if you have effectively addressed your customers' concerns.