The Best Question to Ask a Customer or Prospect

Through the years of training sales people one topic comes up on a regular basis – How do I get the Customer/Prospect to talk to me? In reality, this is the most important thing that a Salesperson has to do – get the customer or prospect to tell them about things. In response, they is a question that when used properly has the power to get customers and prospects talking about their situation. I have referred to it as the “million dollar question” because it is so effective.

Okay, here it is:

“Mr/Ms Prospect/Customer, I’m fully prepared to talk about X, yet, first I would like to understand your perspective on what is important to you and this will allow me to not waste your time discussing things that are not important to you.”

It seems corny, yet it works like a charm with even tight lipped buyers. How does this work? Well, it is due to the three parts of the question. Each part has a “meta talk” that is important to the customer and gives the salesperson more credibility.

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