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How to Answer the 5 Questions Every Client Is Asking

Written by Pete Nelson

As a consumer, how many times have you walked away from a purchase because the salesperson didn’t acknowledge or address the things that were most important to you?

Often times, as a consumer, we are more aware of what a sales person did wrong to lose our business than we are aware of why we lost business when the roles are reversed and we’re the one doing the selling. A large part of that has to do with the fact that as a consumer we know what’s most important to us, even if we don’t directly convey that to the person who we’re buying from. On the other hand, when you’re selling it is very easy to be so consumed with making a sale that you overlook easily placed clues as to what’s most important to your customer.

Recognizing Customer Clues

No matter what you’re selling or who your ideal customer is, there are essential emotional needs and concerns that every sales professional and business owner should address with their target audience. These needs and concerns can be addressed in five basic, yet critical questions that every customer is fully expecting you to answer before they buy from you. These five questions, as you will see, should be addressed both in one on conversations with your clients as well as conveyed in your company’s marketing materials.

Before we get into the five questions, however, we need to first visit a universal truism in the world of sales and marketing. Consumers buy emotionally but do so with enough logical justification not to look foolish.

While your customers will rely on their primary decision making mode to guide them through their buying cycle one thing that never changes is that the higher the stakes are in a sale the more logical or the more emotional your customer’s decision making process becomes.

For example, some consumers, such as those with dominant analytical traits, can suppress their emotional tendencies better than others and therefore go through a much longer and in-depth logical decision making process. The degree by which your customer’s decision to buy from you is made logically or emotionally is almost always based on their personality style and primary buying preferences.

A customer’s personality style not only influences their buying preferences but it also determines the priority in which they rank the five questions. Your ability to spot their decision making style and answer these five questions with the emphasis they expect will ultimately decide the outcome of every sale.

With that in mind, let's examine these five questions. Align them with the current customers you’re going after and determine which questions would be most important to them.

Five Questions Every Prospect Is Asking (before & after they speak with you)

As you read through these, consider your answers and begin preparing how you will answer these questions before they’re even asked of you. This includes face to face interactions with clients as well as addressing the questions in your sales and marketing copy.

1. Is your service a good value and will it do the job?

2. I’m not too sure my company needs your type of service right now?

3. What and how will others think of me hiring you and using your service?

4. Can I afford your service?

5. Can I trust you and your company will deliver results as you promise?

While being capable of answering all five questions is essential to a successful sale, as you can see, the level of importance these questions carry will be directly tied to the decision making style your customer exhibits.

Although these are the five basic and most often asked questions from consumers, simply answering them won’t always guarantee a sale. There are four other key questions you will definitely want to answer before spending a lot of time, effort and energy trying to make a sale. These are questions you will have to answer yourself and they will come at various stages of your sales process.

1. Is there a real opportunity here for a sale or am I wasting my time?

2. Can we realistically compete with the obstacles we’re facing?

3. Can we win this account with our services and still be profitable?

4. Is this account truly worth spending the time to win?

The more you can get your customers to openly talk with you and be comfortable enough address the real issues they’re facing the easier it will be to get answers to all of the questions above and in the order that is most important to them. Getting them answered allows you to get to the truth of the sale. Getting to the truth is your primary goal each time you meet with a prospect, especially on that initial meeting before you and the prospect are officially working together.

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Pete Nelson is recognized as one of North America’s top sales and marketing strategists. He is the founder of Everywhere Woman Media, LLC., which includes the revolutionary marketing & branding agency www.EverywhereMarketing.com that creates business makeovers for women entrepreneurs. He is also the creator behind the popular sales training program Selling In Color.

Along with being the co-author of the book, Success Under Fire: Lessons for Being Your Best In Crunch Time, Pete is also a popular international speaker, who has delivered programs to over 30,000 professionals, during the last eight years, across North America and Europe.

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Did you find this article valuable? If so, don't miss attending Pete's seminar "Are You Talking To Me?" on February 28 at IKEA.