Bob London and Speaker A walk through discovery questions that connect a prospect's internal goals to their customers' priorities and challenges. Asking about a buyer's customers' objectives, operational needs, and risks surfaces insights you can match with your solutions and builds rapport by asking what prospects rarely hear.
Chapters
This is another great question and it's disruptive, which makes it, you know, very, a fruitful question because when I ask people, they often say, "Huh, no one's ever asked me that before," which is good because then you know that there hasn't been another vendor or competitor that's asked that question, which puts you in a little bit of an advantage because maybe you'll get a competitive insight.
What are your customers' priorities? What challenges are they facing?
So again, think about it. Everything your customer does is aligned in some way, shape, or form with acquiring and retaining their customers, growing in their market.
So there are other things that go on, including operations and priorities and back office, but ultimately those things are all in service of selling and retaining customers. So your customers will definitely appreciate you asking about their customers and what's important to them what are their customers trying to achieve, and they'd be very happy to share on this topic. And my, my work over the last 7 or 8 years is proof that they're willing to share.
The next really good question is, um, so, you know, tell me about the potential risks that might keep your company from succeeding.
So this question starts to reveal sort of obstacles or potential risks that may or may not be in your customer's control, but they're definitely on the horizon. But this question could also trigger insights that your company can help address. So somewhere along the way, the more you learn about what's challenging for them, the more insight you have into how you can solve their problems today and perhaps down the road. So it's really all about aligning with what's on your customer's mind and what they want to achieve and what you can possibly help with. So I want to point out that we're not asking—
we're still in this part of the conversation, So this is actually the flow of the questions.
We're still not asking them about their department, their job, or how they interface with your product and what they need. We're, we're not there yet. We're still focused on the big picture. What does the world look like from their perspective, from their company's perspective, which of course influences the perspective of the person you're talking to and in turn influences your priorities.
