Effective Probing | Asking the right sales questions- Deepak Lamba

Our today's guest is Deepak Lamba. He's got over 11 years of experience, and I'm lucky that I got a chance to work with him. What I really like about him is his solid sales concept and the principles. Today, he leads sales at Hubilo, which is a very cool virtual events platform. Today he talks about probing. In fact, he shows you how to do it. Let's welcome Deepak Lamba. Thank you, Deepak, for coming onto the Salespin show. I'm really happy for multiple reasons. One, it took me, like, only 300 attempts to get you here. Actually, 301. And I'm glad that you finally agreed to be here. So what took you so long?

I'd say busy scaling a company from zero to a $10 million business, it takes a lot of effort and pain. So could you guys be 20? We will be. It would just take another six months or so.

Okay. All right. Awesome. Yeah. All I've heard is, like, good things about your company. And I think we have worked together at the same time. I know tons of people who have. Who you have hired who could be my potential hires, but you guys hired it, so. Yeah, I mean, I can't even think of, you know, approaching them because I know they're at a very good place under your leadership, under other people. So, anyways, thank you so much again for coming on the show.

Pleasure.

Um, you decided to talk about a topic which. Which seems very crucial, and yet not many people pay attention to it. Do you want to talk about what you are going to talk about today?

Absolutely. I think the topic that I've chosen is probing. And if I have to sum it up, you know, probing is very, very important simply because of the fact somebody has knocked up your door and now they're interested about your product and services. Now, effective probing would do two things for you. You'll have two outcomes. Either you'll have a great customer who is an idle fit for you, or at the end of the probing, you realize that probably they're not the right fit for you as a customer. And onboarding them would lead to more problems. Right. Both of them, I'd say, is a desirable outcome for me. If I'm onboard a great client, that means my LTV over the term of 12 to 24 months would be really, really high. And if I'm. If I'm able to avoid onboarding a wrong customer who is not an idle fit for me, I am not only avoiding a churn, but I'm also avoiding a bad customer experience who could effectively impact my future clients. So that's, I would say, are the two very important outcomes of an effective probing.

That's a fair point. Now, a lot of listeners and a lot of people who are watching this might not even understand the term probing. And they might be googling this right now. And we might understand probing in general, but they might not understand probing in the sales sense. So can we like dumb it down for people? Like, what does probing even mean?

Let me really simplify that. So imagine you visiting a doctor and he takes you through a series of questions to identify the real issue. Right. Similarly, in sales methodology, if a customer shows up and let's say they want to inquire more about my services or the product, I want to ask them a series of questions. These series of questions could be both open ended or close ended to really identify the set of requirements, their expectations, their emotions and their feelings behind the search for an ideal product or service. So this is what probing is. At the end of the probing, at the end of this process, we are able to identify and we are able to answer questions like what do they need, how soon do they need it, how desperately do they need it, how big of a fit or how good of a fit my product or a service is with respect to their requirements.

Okay, so when I was in my SDR role for the first time, I'll be honest, okay, the way I thought of probing was that, you know what, you have to do this as an exercise so that me as a seller probably has the benefit. However, as and when I've spent few years, what I've come to realize, it's, it's not the case. It's actually benefiting both because like you said, you don't want, you don't want to onboard a customer, you don't want to, you know, win a customer only to, you know, get churned three or four months later. Right. So you want to establish that, hey, whatever we are doing is in lines with what they're expecting. So there's a mutual fit. So there's a win win for both of them.

Absolutely, absolutely. In today's day and age, effective probing coupled with transparency would give you a client which will stay for you, will give you a right client which will stay with you for a very long, long time. And the opposite of it is, for example, you're speaking to someone and they turn out to be not an idle fit for you, but the experience is going to be so good for them that they might end up being a referral for you. Right. So you just got to look at the outcomes of a conversation.

So I think we have just touched upon like you, like you said, the two outcomes when you actually are good, become good at probing and why you need to do good probing. How do you actually do it?

Before we get into that, another thing is from a sales perspective, effective probing would also help you identify what kind of a plan or a product or a service that the prospect needs. Because you could be selling maybe more than one product, you could have more than one plan. Effective probing not only helps you identify if they are a good fit for you or not, but also it helps you to identify what kind of service, what type of plan would be a good fit for them. Because what could probably happen is either you can undersell or oversell a client. That could also lead to a bad experience. Right? So that is why this is another outcome that I missed. Sharing parts. Effective problem also means that you're able to sell right now. How do we do that? You know, I think every SDR or any goes through a pre call research. They try and identify who this, who this person is, what this industry is. But I think right when you're in the call, you got to start off with some, you know, a few open ended questions like can you tell me a bit more about the reason for your search? Why are you looking for a service similar to ours? You know that would. This open ended question would give the prospect to explain their pain point on their own version. To be honest, they'll tell you their own version of story.

Right?

Another good question that I love about is, you know, how long you have been looking for a service like us or a product like us. This will tell you about the length of the problem, you know, if the answer is something like, you know, it's been six months, I'm looking for a service, you know, why did it take six months? Like is it not a burning issue for you? Now this, on this question would actually help you understand what is the severity of this issue and how desperately are they looking for it and how long, you know, how quickly you want to solve this problem. This would tell you about the urgency and how does an ideal solution look for you? For example, I want to know like, okay, you're trying to solve this problem for six months and it is a high priority issue and we want to solve that immediately. Okay, but how does an ideal solution look like for you? Because what you're offering with this particular question, you're trying to now match up what the prospect needs and what I serve, right and this is how, this is also the start of your kind of, you know, Sandlers did it very, very right. They introduced the concept of something called Pain funnel which I really, really like because this also helps asking a few questions related to the previous experience. You know, did you use any other solution to solve this problem? Why the solution didn't work for you? What was your experience? What would you want to do differently this time to solve this problem? You know, do you feel that it was the product that you chose earlier or service you chose earlier or was it a problem of the execution? What your, what are your expectations from a solution or product like ours? Now all of these things, you know, are giving prospect the ability to express themselves. And you know, all of these questions are great questions. And this is where probing can only be successful with active listening because they're going to be long monologues coming from the customers. So another thing that we need, I want my like people to note down is effective probing is not only about asking smart and great questions, is about being an active listener. Listen to their monologues patiently and that's. And from there you will draw your next series of questions. They will tell you something interesting and you would want to know more. Now this interest that you have, the more interest that you take in their stories would eventually help you to win their trust as well. Because you're patiently listening, you want to know more about them. And you could also, you know, either this will give you opportunities to share your side of the story, share your experiences and even empathize with them. So you would start imagining where this is all leading to. Right?

Yeah.

This gives this immense amount of opportunities if, if, if probing done right, you could end up selling 100k deal on a phone if you, if you catch all the points. And effective probing also gives you your map. That's your mutual action plan. You know, some of the reps get lost. Okay, fine, I had a great call but I don't know the next steps. Probably you're not listening then because the next steps worth the answers that the guy was carrying. Probably he wants to do a proof of concept, a free trial. He wants to see some sample data. Depends upon whatever product you're service that you're selling. He's giving you a problem statement. He's giving you everything that you need. Now he needs an action plan from you. And how would you assure them and how would you, how does your product solve their problem? Is the evidence now he is looking for.

Got it. So I have a follow up question. So of course I, since you know, when I'm on LinkedIn, I think there was a, there was a post from like one sales leader where he, where he made a very vital point which is that hey, today if I'm a buyer and if I go on a call with let's say an AE or an scr, I'm not expecting to be in a series of conversation where I'm giving them a lot of inputs. I do want something from them as well. Now here is the problem statement. Most of the calls usually run for 30 minutes, right? You have 30 minutes, two to three minutes for people to settle in, two to three minutes for chit chat and then you are left with 25. And I'm guessing in the last five minutes you want to, you want to run your mutual action plan like you said. So you're left with 20 minutes. In 20 minutes you want to ask them the questions, you want to probe them. At the same time you want to demonstrate enough value that there is some mutual actionable plan like you said. How do you do that in that 20 minutes?

Now the problem with probing is it needs to be done in the right quantity. Either you can overdo probing, you can make this an interrogation session for a prospect, or you could, you know, ask too few questions that just that you're lost, that you don't know what the next steps is. So probing needs to be in three parts. You start with a couple of open ended questions to make them easy. You know, tell me more about yourself, what role do you play at the organization? This first question about the person, tell me something about, you know, what problem are you trying to solve? And you know, what is your version of your problem? Okay, he tells you the problem, how does an ideal solution look like for you? And a couple more questions you put in is like how long you've been looking for a solution and how urgently you want to solve. So these five questions now give you the answers, you know about the person, you know what the role they play at the organization, you know a version of the problem as explained by the prospect and you know what the ideal solution looks like. Now the next series of questions needs to be map the issues with your solution, right? You, you have the problem statement with you right now. So for example, I'm looking for a solution where I will have information about all my prospects. Like you know, a database that comprises of phone numbers, email addresses, all the popular databases that are out there. I want to now ask, the problem statement is I want a high data accuracy, I want a Database which has high data accuracy. Okay, now I want to know like data accuracy in terms of email address or phone numbers or both, what's the ideal outcome for you? And they would say that probably I need a high, high accuracy of phone numbers. This is where I come in and say that, you know what, Great, you need 80% data accuracy for phone numbers. We could commit to an 85% data accuracy. So that's where you now start giving back to your point. I need to give back now I've answered. You need 80%. I can commit to 85%. Next set of questions. My email bounce rate is, let's say less than 95% or whatever the numbers come out to be. So this is where I start coming back up. Right. And right at the end of the probing, you in internally give the option, you pass on the, let's say a kind of control of the callback to the prospect at this point in time. Do you want to ask me anything? Is there any questions from your end? At times you kind of pass on the control of the call to the prospect as well and empower them to ask questions as well. That's a, that's a part of probing as well. Now in the third, in the last half, or let's say in the third half, in the third part of the probing concept you're really talking about. So what do you plan? Like, you know, I do have some next steps in my mind, but I want to hear from you as to how do you want to take things forward. This is exactly the moment the prospect would actually tell you the truth. And you will be able to identify if his window shopping is really interesting because if he has certain next steps in his mind completely, they will come out with it. But if they don't, they'll pass on the this particular bait into you. And if you have to decide the next steps, it's not coming from the customers. You take and you take an understanding that I would have to put in a lot of effort to convince this prospect because they aren't convinced on my first call at least. So either my email or my demo or my POC needs to be really quick. But on the contrary, if you get the next steps from the client, from the prospect, you actually just now got your mutual action plan from them and you just need to make it better. So this is how you know. In 25 minutes, divide your probing into three parts, dedicate the first part, make it about themselves, the fifth question or sixth question, ask them about how the ideal solution looks like map Your, you know, product and services with the problem statement that they have lead them towards the next steps. This would come with a lot of practice. Right. Your, this plan could go for a toss. Suddenly if the customer says that I'm not going to answer anything for you and start talking about yourself, then, then you lead with questions, then what you do is, okay, fine, I'm going to start the call. Hey, this is, you know, Deepak from Hubila. We do virtual tech and you know, these are kind of features that we provide. Right. This is kind of a brief introduction. Right. And I know that the customer is waiting for a lot more information from my end, but I need to slip in questions. So I would like, like, you know, let me take a rain check. While we are demonstrating or talking a lot about the product, I want to take a rain check and would want to know, am I moving in the right direction? Am I talking about the things more relevant to you? Right. These kind of rain checks that we're going to do, we don't need to go into a monologue where we like if a customer says that, go ahead and present and you present for 25 minutes straight. No, yeah, take a rain check after like initial 5 minutes and ask them and confirm, are we going in the right direction? Do we, do you want me to stress on something else? The person would say, no, no, keep going, keep going. And probably you could, now you can understand that probably I'm in the right direction. I'm not so sure. But I have done my pre call.

Don't you think, Deepak, you know, a lot of time people would say just to be nice to you because they don't want to, they don't want to give you a lot of inputs. How do you, how do you judge for that?

No, absolutely. It has happened to me multiple number of times when I've like given demos, asked these questions around. And yes, there are types of audiences in reality and they are the type of people who don't want to give out much. Is there a magical silver bullet to solve that problem? No, unfortunately not. Because we're sales people, we're not magicians. We can't, you know, we try and read people's mind but then you got to rely on your gut and your instinct at that point in time. If you're not getting something, if you're not getting much from your prospect, that means consider yourself that you got to do the best. And that is where your pre call research comes in handy. You read about that person about LinkedIn, you, you gotta motivate them to have a conversation. It would only happen because you have done a lot of research about them.

Yeah, I mean, so for example, let's say if you had implemented a solution, let's say which I'm selling you now, I'm demoing the product and I could actually bring that up. Hey, Deepak, I see that, you know, you were responsible to bring this solution in your previous company. So I'm guessing you already know about this space already. I don't have to, you know, educate you about this space. Is there anything specific which you're looking for or any reason why you're not implementing the same solution, for example, which you implement in the previous one, that, that will probably open up doors, like you said, that, that, that is offering me to allow prospect to, you know, speak more about himself and his past accomplishments and he'll probably give you something which you can use.

Absolutely, absolutely. I'll tell you what, another tip is. It also, it highly depends upon how you open the call. The first five seconds of a call, the five second rule is important, trust me. And this works on human psychology. If you open up a call with high enthusiasm and, you know, with a smile and with high energy, even if the client, let's say if the prospect was. Came in a mood to grill, you would have a change of heart. And so this, so that's why we say, you know, like 12 years ago, when I got my first sales training, I was told to keep like a mirror in front of me, a small one, and just ensure that whenever you're speaking to a prospect, you're smiling. And though back in those days, 12 years ago, we're not doing video calls. It was like a hard phone that we were using to make calls and we were just to assume we had to read tones, audio tones. We would have to read the tonality of the prospect to understand their moods, not their facial expressions, which in today's days is a luxury I'd say that people have. We didn't have that back then. So research, have a pleasant opening, maintain high energy and enthusiasm if you want to end up, you know, having an effective probing session with the prospect.

Fair point. I think we have discussed a lot about why probing is important. How to actually do it, how does it actually, you know, how would this look like on an actual call? I'm always of thought, you know, if I want to be good at something, I really want to be, you know, go to the depth of that particular issue. For example, now I realize that probing is important. I want to know how do I actually do it? So these, whatever we discussed so far, these might not be actionable tips for someone, let's say, who's starting the career. This, this might be good for someone to, let's say, you know, reiterate what he already knows. Let's say if I were, if I were a newbie, okay, I have no idea how to become good at probing. What do I do? What do I read, what do I, what do I study? Like, how do I become? Like where you are or where other good people are.

I think there's ton of sales material out there. I'd say start with Sanders. That's the basic 101. They have really good set of questions that they have articulated for different situations. I think most of the viewers are already following sales spin. So I think that's the second best place to go after sandal is I think learn from your real lives. I think there's already a lot of content out there and the best advice that I got in my life about salesforce, that there's sales happening everywhere. The sales conversations. Every conversation is a sales conversation between two people. Whatever is happening, it's a kind of sales conversation. Either you're trying to win an argument, either you're trying to convince someone to do something right. It's all of this is a sales conversation. Now anybody who's starting a career, you could start imagining. You start thinking about, you know, your first visit to the doctor. A doctor asks, for example, you say that, you know, I have an upset stomach. The questions start like, what did you eat last night? What kind of symptoms you have, do you have fever? Etc. What they're trying to do is trying to analyze the problem statement by asking a series of questions. And they are inquisitive. Great probing thing or example is talk to a toddler, talk to a four or five year old child. The kind of questions that these folks gonna ask is gonna drive you crazy. But look at their intensity, look at their nature. Like, look at their effort to know the truth. That is where you learn from. So sales for me, yes, there is a lot of content out there, a lot of books have been written. But if anybody who wants to pick up sales and probing effectively, just see how the humans are behaving around, you have. If you have an inquisitive nature, if you want to know more in a nicer way, I think you'll do really, really well. But if you are hesitant in asking questions, if you are hesitant, if you have a difficulty, I think then write a set of questions. And follow that. If asking questions does not come naturally to you and if you feel that you're not inquisitive by nature, then create a method. Write down those 10 questions. At the end of the day the answers to those 10 questions would help you identify if it's the right prospect for you or not. That's it. Create your own qualification criteria or probing technique. Try different things. For example, for me, if I, if I were to share an example, the way that I have probed all my life is I don't. Hey Rahul, what's up? How you doing today? You know you would say that I'm doing good. Great. Good. You know the next question would be to do an expectation setting before you start asking a series of questions is Rahul. So what we're going to do is on this particular call we're going to ask a few questions. Reason we want to see if we are good fit for each other. So set the expectations. Working towards an outcome. More of the next part. You know Rahul, even before we begin to start talking about, you know, what are you looking for and what I have to offer, I'd like to know a bit more about you. How long you have been working for ABC incorporation and what role and responsibilities that you have. Then you will talk about yourself. That I've been into sales for let's say about last 12 years have been going ahead and you know created a lot of SDR processes, trained and coached a lot of SDRs and BDRs and worked at different organizations. This is my roles and KPIs to generate pipeline and opportunities and maintain high level of SFDC hygiene. Let's say that these are my core responsibilities. Probably I could slip an interesting question. What do you love more? What do you, what does excite? What does the most exciting part about your job? Now this, if you're comfortable to pull off with your personality you should do that. But if you think that you'll not be able to do it, don't, don't experiment. Don't go on the adventurous side. So probably you know I'm going to ask and I do ask this question what excites you about your job? What do you like would you love more? Now why is this question important is you got to check the answer. This is completely about that portion. Now it this question, the answer to this question and the way that the answer is going to tell you how excited about are they about this particular call. Now if they are highly excited they're going to give you some great answers. If they're not excited, but they have the opportunity to talk about themselves. They can get that excitement level up. So you're tricking them, tricking them into talking about themselves and creating that unnatural, or let's say artificial excitement. The moment that hits and you start talking about, oh, that's great. You know what? I love to do the same similar things. What is exactly the solution that you're looking for? The answer to that question could be, I'm looking for a database which has high accuracy for email and phone numbers and titles and highly accurate database system. Okay, great. How long you have been looking for? You could say that I'm looking for about three months. For three months you've been looking for to deploy a solution or are you looking to replace a current solution now? If you're looking for a new solution, it becomes a bit easier because you have nothing. But consider the other scenario. I have a solution in place. Okay, then why are you looking for it? I'm just looking out if there is something better than what I have. Can you, can you define better for me now exactly?

Yeah.

Right now this is how you see that, you know, they are prospects who are smart enough to say that, no, I have a solution. It works absolutely fine. But I'm looking, I'm just seeing what is out there in the market, you know, and I'm just seeing if there's something better defined better for me.

This is where I think a lot of people go wrong, because I'll give an example. So let's say, like you said, I'm selling a database, right? And if somebody says I'm using the market leader, the most natural transition is, okay, you know what, as an A or as a salesperson, I would probably think, oh, you know what I think what he's talking about. Most of the time people are honest about it. They'll tell you what they're using. And most of the time, salesperson would go into the pitch, oh, you know what, don't worry about it. I have everything covered. And you start narrating all the features or all the ways how your solution is better than the other market leader. And I think that is where a lot of people I see go wrong. Because you don't know, for example, how they're using that tool. Your solution might be better in, let's say X, but they don't even need X for that, for example. Then whatever you pitch you had in mind, that kind of goes for a toss. So like you said, they're looking for better. Okay, find better. Tell me how exactly are you using your current solution? If there was one thing which you wish you know could have been better like you said, define that better for me now. Now it's contextual. Now you understand. Okay, he's talking about let's say better email accuracy or more phone numbers or LinkedIn extension or whatever that you know, feature of the tool is. Now you know. Okay, you know what, my tool doesn't even do that. So I would probably have to talk about other things which we do better and see if the prospect is interested. Something on those lines.

Absolutely. Something in those lines. So you know, again as you mentioned, they're going to give you some context about it and that's where you start fitting in small nuggets of your product. For example, I could even slip in and say look, you define better than you say that. You know, I'm looking for database which has high accuracy of phone numbers. Okay, great Rahul, I think that's a very valid ask. Then would you agree now we're talking about some close ended questions now Would you agree that high, the reason for high accuracy data for phone numbers is that that would help you increase your connect rate. Yes. Increasing connect rate would actually mean high number of opportunities. High number of opportunities means an immense increase in pipeline and could effectively impact revenue. Yes. Suddenly you got the client to say yes to about four closed ended questions.

Yeah.

That means you got him on the zone and now exactly this. That's where you say, would you be interested in trialing out our product? We offer a seven day free trial. We gonna start with an onboarding exercise and then at the end of the seven days you can see the effectiveness of our database and probably we can help you improve these metrics and definitely are interested in resource metrics. Naturally you're gonna say let's go ahead with it. This is how the structure is now the difficult things could be. Imagine you get a prospect who says, who says nothing on the calls. Right. The people who say I have everything I don't need. I'm not really looking out out for a solution but I'm just here to see what you guys have to offer. Now you got to be smart here enough and you got to use what they have told you about themselves. Hey Rahul, you're a senior director at the organization that you work for and I see the time is of immense importance for you. I could definitely walk you through the entire platform that we have in about 20 minutes and try to squeeze in some points. But I won't do a good job without Your support. So if you're not actively looking for a solution at this point in time, probably we can connect back later and then whenever the time is ready, when you're exploring. And most of the times, the answer to that question is no. No, go ahead. I want to know about these three things because they don't want to be rude to you. They have definitely scheduled 25, 30 minutes with you and you. And you have really empowered them. You've put them in a position that your time is important. So if you're not actively looking for a solution, if there's nothing that I can solve, you solve for you today, it's connect back, I can send you some collateral and things like that. Now, why this is important, why most of the sales people wouldn't do it, because they have the urgency to pitch, not to probe or not to walk away. Right, so the detachment thing. Right, the detachment, yeah. And this would put them back on. This would like, you know. Okay, fine. No, I'm here. I need to understand about these three things. Okay, great, Ralph. So you want to understand about how do we provide accurate data. Great. Can I just have a couple more questions answered? And it would help me to demonstrate my. The capabilities of my product. So if the opposite of that could be. The client decides to move out. Hey, I'm not looking for it. You will feel bad for about 5 minutes, 10 minutes. But imagine going through the entire demo, and that client hosts you. You're saving time for each of. For him and for yourself. You're saving to. Saving yourself from the pain.

I mean, I think, yeah, it's. You have to think about the long term. At the same time, like you said, he's probably gonna ghost you or probably whatever. Worst case, you know, deal never closes. He says, you know what? I'm not interested. I was never interested in the first place. And that is something which you could have figured out in the first place. You know, in the first call, like you said, you would have probably felt bad for a few minutes. But yeah, after that, you can actually move on to better prospects. You can actually, you know, chase those deals which have high potential. Right. Which makes sense.

Right?

I think this has been super helpful, Deepak. Honestly, I think this is probably the only session we've had where we have, like, had so much wisdom at the same time, so much real practical examples. So this kind of really helps. Now it's a time to kind of grill you in actual. In real. Okay, I have a rapid fire for you. I have five questions. Let me know when you're ready?

Sure. Let's start. All right.

Your first, your current celebrity crush, Chiara Advani. Same. Your idea of a great holiday.

Sleeping.

If you were not in sales, what would you be doing?

That's a pretty tough one. I really don't know what I've been doing. I don't think so. I don't know. I would have tried my hands at acting, but I don't know how would have that worked.

All right, that's a site I've never seen. One company you want to work with in the future.

My own company.

Okay. One sales leader you would want to see. Next on salespeople.

One sales leader, Jordan Belfort.

All right. All right. No comments. Okay. Thank you so much for having the show again. And you don't get you win a hamper. In case you were thinking you won.

You should raise funds for that.