People Strategies: Fact-finding questions reveal customers' needs

Premature advocation is a fatal flaw in sales situations. Determining the real needs and underlying customer issues are essential before advancing to presenting your solution.

If you have well-developed discovery skills, your customers will perceive you as a competent and credible resource who understands their situation well enough to recommend an appropriate solution no matter how personally experienced you are.

"Discovery" is a process to determine customers' business needs and personal motives. This is important because problems and opportunities may not always be what they seem. During discovery, you are to listen very carefully to the customer and ask questions that lead to an accurate understanding of the customer's situation.

You can obtain information and assure an accurate assessment of the customer's situation by doing these activities.

Ask fact-finding questions to draw out the customer's status who, what, when, where and how.

Ask feeling-finding questions to determine the customer's desired status the customer's hopes, wishes, values and beliefs.

Describe your understanding of the customer's situation and ask whether your understanding is accurate.

Generate a verbal or written discovery agreement to summarize your understanding of the customer's situation. Include current status (obstacles, causes, buying conditions, background), desire status (opportunities, solutions to problems), request for agreement (always check to see if your understanding of a customer's situation is accurate), and recommendations for next steps

Current, desired situations

Begin with permission questions to open dialogue and demonstrate empathy for any relationship tension the customer may be feeling, and reassure the customer of your positive intent.

"Would it be all right if I asked you a few questions? We offer a variety of solutions. To make sure we talk about the best ones for you, is it OK if I get some more information?"

Fact-finding questions are targeted at objective, verifiable data such as who, what, when, where and how much.

"What kind of equipment or service are you now using?"

"How many units per day do you produce?"

"When does it require maintenance?"

Feeling-finding questions ask for subjective information which gets at the customer's opinions, feelings, values and beliefs. They help you understand a customer's desired situation and contain words like think or feel.

"How do you feel about the overall effectiveness of your equipment or service?"

"In your opinion, is that an acceptable daily production rate?"

"What do you think about the loss of productivity during maintenance periods?"

Fact- and feeling-finding questions identify a customer's task and personal motives for making a buying decision.

Task motives are defined as the logical, practical, usually functional reasons for buying. They generally involve money or productivity.

When considering money, people are generally motivated to purchase items that increase their income or reduce their costs.

When considering productivity, people look to increase their output or quality, or to decrease the effort required.

Motives

Personal motives are the individual, personal preferences that spur a person to buy. They are generally psychological in nature and involve relationships with people.

Respect: These buyers want to demonstrate and prove their expertise. They are interested in research that not only supports your product or service, but also reinforces the work they have already done.

Approval: These buyers want to be sure that others affected will be pleased by their decision to buy.

They are responsive to products/services that reduce conflict and provide minimal risk.

Power: These buyers are looking for ways to gain greater control over some real, practical aspect of their situation. Give them the ability to make quicker decisions, choose from more options, or get the desired results in a better way.

Recognition: For some buyers, the desire for recognition will be the dominant personal motive.

They are interested in products/services that give them greater visibility, provide opportunities to be a leader, and are unique or innovative.

Discovery is the key to building credibility and gaining customer acceptance of solutions.