You probably know that for a customer to buy something from you, there has to be a problem or a need. The customer can do nothing (and often does) unless there is a problem to solve or a need to fill. If you’re executing an effective questioning strategy, you are uncovering your customer’s need or pain.
You might have found that your products can reduce downtime, reduce employee turnover, increase customer satisfaction or increase productivity or profits. That’s not enough.
All too often when you uncover a customer problem and hear the customer talk about it, you might jump right to offering the solution. If it means putting a proposal together, you think you have enough information to write a winning proposal. You don’t. Unless you know how much that customer’s problem is costing him, you are making it more difficult to get the results you want.
Why? A problem without a price can often be insufficient to motivate a customer to buy. Knowing there’s a problem is very different from knowing that the problem costs $15,000. Your job is to quantify the problem.
You will sell more when you can quantify a customer’s problem.
Best wishes for your sales success!
