Getting to "No" Part 4: Ask Better Questions

What a great day! I was spending some time on TweetDeck when one of the Tweets in the stream caught my eye. It said, “I take pride in the ‘No’s’ that I get (means I am taking action!)”

What was this? Another crusader for “No”? I checked the Twitter profile and found not one but two advocates for our two-lettered friend. What a great connection. This is why I love social media! So keep up the “No” campaign Andrea and Richard, and I’ll be cheering you along the way.

On with the series, then. Today’s step offers you the keys to the kingdom when it comes to getting to “No”. Asking better questions really is the best, fastest, most efficient way to get to the “No” you need to hear and avoid that “Maybe” trap.

Let’s start with the reason you’re asking questions to begin with. First of all, lose the illusion that qualifying questions are supposed to help you close sales. Not so, my friend. Qualifying questions are meant to help you sift the wheat (potential buyers) from the chaff (friendly people who have trouble saying “No” and want to keep you in the “Maybe”-loop). Great questions help prospects self-select so that you can find the ones who really want to work with you.

What kind of questions do you need to ask? IT sales and marketing expert Robin Robins recommends a simple, three-step series of questions that will help you and your prospect determine if it makes sense to continue the conversation. The first question is “What’s most important to you when it comes to…” The purpose of the question is to start to get an idea of the values of the prospect you’re talking to. If the answer is something like “Getting the lowest price and the best service possible”, you’re probably in for trouble, especially if your great service comes with a heftier price tag than your competitors’.

Of course, you’ll need to dig a little deeper than that. Pursuing the intent of identifying the the values of the prospect, you might try asking “What else is important?” a couple of times until you feel you’ve got a complete list of concerns, ranked in order of relative importance. Now it’s time to move on to the next question.

Ask, “Why is that important to you?” This allows the prospect to clarify, both to you and to themselves, whether there is a real opportunity for partnership. If a prospect says that getting the lowest price is the most important thing and you feel like you can provide the lowest price, yet they follow up by saying that the reason they need low prices is that they’re having cash flow problems and “by the way do you offer 60-day terms?”, you know the opportunity is a risky one, right? And when you explain your COD terms, you’ll probably get that “No” you were looking for.

Next question: “How will you know when you’ve acheived [whatever they said was most important to them]?” This part of the discussion is really going to help you make sure there’s no confusion when it comes time to present possible solutions. If the prospect tells you at this point that they’ll know they’re getting the lowest price if their current vendor isn’t willing to match or beat it, again, it’s time to start packing your things and thinking of an exit strategy (more on that tomorrow); this situation is clearly headed for a “No”!

But let’s say that these three questions uncover a real oppportunity to move the sale forward. What then? It’s time for the most important question of all. You say, “So I have a question for you: keeping in mind the agreement we made at the beginning of this conversation about telling me “No”, if I could show you something that would give you [most important thing] that covered [why it's important] and gave you [how they'll know it when it's right], would it be worth it to you to meet again and learn about that solution with an eye toward partnering on such a project?”

This is it: their opportunity to deliver a big fat “No” and let you off the “Maybe” hook. And if you’ve followed these first four steps correctly, chances are pretty good that that’s exactly what you’ll get. At the same time, you’ll also have improved your chances at getting a “Yes”. And if you do, congratulations! You now have the green light to switch gears from getting a quick “No” to looking for the “Yes” at the end of the funnel!

But before you start writing up that presentation, there’s one more step we need to consider, and it’s going to be the hardest one to do: developing the ability to know when you should say “No” to the prospect. Be sure to tune in for this last step tomorrow!