BY Rachel Cagle
First impressions are everything in sales. Your prospects have very little free time to spare for discovery calls, so you need to make yours count and connect with customers over the phone. Will your discovery call lay the groundwork for a fruitful business relationship? Here are HubSpot writer Dan Tyre’s tips on which questions to ask during these calls to increase your chances of success.
Questions to Connect with Customers Over the Phone
“Tell me about your role. What do you do day-to-day?”
What better way to connect with customers over the phone than to ask outright what their responsibilities are? Get them to break down their entire day or workweek. With that information, you will get a clearer idea of which of your products or services they would potentially be interested in to help them out with their responsibilities to make their job easier.
“Are you having problems in [area as relates to the product]?”
Once you think of a product or service that could be useful to the potential client, lead the conversation in the direction of the problem it could solve. If you can get the client to admit that they need help in an area you can help with, the call will seem less like a pitch and more like a problem-solving session.
“Why hasn’t it been addressed before?”
It’s unlikely that you’re the first salesperson to come offering a solution through a product or service. With this question, you can find out where your competition fell short without sounding cocky. Was it an issue of price? Did they not get along with the previous sales rep? What caused hesitation in the past? This knowledge will help you build a solid sales pitch and connect with customers over the phone.
“If you didn’t choose a product, do you have a plan in place to address this problem?”
This could serve as a casual reminder to the client that solving a problem on their own could be more difficult and time-consuming. If their problem is time sensitive, it could sway the prospect to act quickly in your favor.
“How can I help make this easy?”
This is where you can connect with customers over the phone by showing your humanity. Once you ask this question, the call is no longer just about the potential client’s problems or the sale. This question now shows that you want to work as a team with the client to make their life easier. It’s a call to action. “How can we get the ball rolling to make your job easier through this business partnership?”
Connecting with customers over the phone is all about getting to know the potential client and their needs to access how you can help them using your products or services. Therefore, the questions you ask them are crucial. Do not go into these discovery calls with a pitch. Let your client do most of the talking, but lead them in the direction of the sale with well thought out and targeted questions.