The Desert of Arizona
Cloudy and Wet 41 Degrees
I used to work at a bank. And while that experience is something I never care to repeat, I DID learn a fair amount about selling. In particular, I learned the value of asking questions.
It didn’t stop me from quitting via FAX one day, but that’s another story for another time 🙂
One simple but powerful question that you can use when you’re talking to prospects is this one:
What does success look like to you?
I can’t remember where I heard this first. Maybe it was David Sandler…
But open ended questions like this one are GOLDEN. They take the pressure off of you and allow your prospect to tell you everything you need to know to actually help them.
When you have the right information, “selling” isn’t hard at all.
You simply show the prospect how what you do connects them to what they ultimately want.
Most service providers are so excited to talk about themselves they skip over the most important step of asking questions. If you want to be perceived as an advisor and charge (and get!) premium fees, you can’t act like a vendor. You must ADIVSE. And to advise, you need the right information.
Once you do it enough, you’ll never go back.
In fact, it doesn’t take long to realize a true advisor would never sell anything to anyone unless they truly understood what that prospective client wanted to achieve.
How do you figure that out?
Ask.