Marketing: Ask the right question
When you’re doing sales marketing, the way how you talk to your client is played the most important part. If you have a good communication skill, you can sold out your product very well even your product quality is suck.
How you ask questions will determine your results.
If you’re selling life insurance, you probably having some problems when you are trying to pursue your friends to buy from you. Most of the time you will get the problems like below:
1. Your friends won’t listen to your phone.
2. They’re trying to stay away from you.
3. Friendship relationship will getting worst.
and etc.
It’s not your job fault but the way how you talk and ask questions. Most new sales people will directly sell the product instead of trying to understand the client problems.
Here are some questions that most new sales people ’Love’ to use:
(I used insurance as an example)
1. Do you want to buy insurance medical card?
2. Please contact me when you want to buy insurance.
3. Do you have insurance already?
If you’re using the questions above, 95% of people will say NO or REJECT you.
Let me exlplain the first question:
When you’re asking ‘Do you want to buy insurance medical card’? Most people will say ‘NO’ - because you have set a trap for yourself in the question. When you’re asking this kind of question, the asnwer is only YES or NO. (you will get 90% of ‘NO’ for the answer)
How about tweak the question to:
‘What kind of insurance medical card you’re using?’
You won’t get yes or no from this kind of question. if the person able to give you the name of the insurance within 2-3 seconds, which mean they already got the medical card. (90% is honest answer)
If the person answer you the name of the insurance after 4 seconds, 90% is fake answer. Which mean the person do not have any medical card but trying to reject you. Don’t give up, at least you got the information that this person do not have any yet, so you can do follow with him.
Let’s proceed with the question number 2.
‘Please contact me when you want to buy insurance’. (99% will say OK)
If people say OK to you, which mean 99% will not contact you. It’s very rare case that you receive someone phone saying that ‘I want to buy inisurance’. People won’t sold themselve, so please do not ask people to selling something back to themselve.
So how to let people call you for questions? Here’s a good example:
‘I’m now studying insurance, you can call me if you have any questions or problems about insurance.’
99% people will say OK as well. But you will get some of them calling you for questions. You’re not selling them anything but giving free advice and tips. Just like blog, people like to read blog instead of reading salesletter. Blog provide free content but salesletter trying to sell something.
When people has problems or questions, they will seeing you like an expert. They won’t call to the person that they have rejected them before. Because they didn’t reject you previously when you give permission to them to ask you questions. So they’re more comfortable to call you instead of the person who has been rejected by them.
Let’s proceed with the last question:
‘Do you have insurance already?’
This question is something similiar like the question 1. You will get YES or NO for this question.
Use the same tactic like question 1:
‘What’s the insurance company you’re using right now?’
You won’t get yes or no for the answer. But the correct name of the insurance company. Same thing, if they can give you the name of the company within 2-3 seconds, which mean they have already using other insurance company services and 90% is correct answer.
If they give you the answer after 4 seconds, 90% will be a fake answer. Because they do not have any, so they will take time to think one to reject you. Most people will take around 5-7 seconds to give you a fake answer. So you will know that this person do not have any insurance yet and so you can put them into the future follow up list.
NOTE: These example marketing questions are not for insurance only, but I took insurance as an example to share what I have learned from real experiences.
As I said earlier, if you are asking the wrong question, the result will be different. Probaly losing relationship with your friends. They’re afraid of you to sell them something. What if you’re telling them that they can find you or ask for advice when they have any questions or problems about insurance.
Provide free advice and tips will help you to build up the relationship and trust. When people seeing you as an expert, they will take your advice to solve their problems.
Example: John is having problems with his computer. His computer under attacked by Virus and so he’s worrying about his data. He phone you for advice, and you give him some tips to transfering his data to somewhere else and then clear up the files. After that, you will ‘advice’ him to use ‘ABC Anti-Virus’ software to protect his PC to avoid the same case happen.
So, asking the right questions will help bringing more sales, while asking wrong questions will getting worst and worst. Think before you ask.
If you have ask wrong questions previously, no worries, we all learned from mistakes. There is no perfect but we’re trying to make it perfect.
Please leave your comment if you have any questions or comments. Thank you!
Tags: marketing questions, how to ask questions, telemarketing skill, sales marketing, sales communication skill
