2 Reasons To Ask Follow-Up Questions During Qualifying
We call this “digging in.”
When your prospect gives you an answer during qualifying that is ambiguous, confusing, or seems like it might be just the tip of an iceberg.
A junior rep will go straight on to the next question, like a receptionist collecting info at the DMV.
An experienced sales rep, on the other hand, will ask follow-up questions to dig deeper into surface-level answers.
For example, if you ask a prospect,
“Would you be able to get this started today?”
And they respond,
“Well, yea, but only if the price is right.”
Then you need to dig in on their preconceived idea of the “right price.”
You could ask,
“Did you have a price in mind?”
Or,
“What have you paid for something like this in the past?”
There are two reasons for asking follow-up questions during qualifying:
- Keeps the sales encounter conversational and flowing.
- Allows the salesperson to “dig in” on key topics.
1. Keep it conversational.
Nobody likes to feel like they’re being interrogated. Or worse, that they’re talking to someone who isn’t really listening to them.
But this is exactly how the prospect feels when the salesperson just reads the qualifying questions from their script, one after another, without really listening to what the prospect is saying in response.
If you’re struggling with this, you can pretend like you’re talking to your best friend and you actually care about their life.
If your best friend was telling you about their vacation to Cabo, you wouldn’t just go straight on to talking about last night’s baseball game. No, of course not. You would ask more about Cabo! How was the weather? Did you go snorkeling? How was the food? Can you take me with you next time?
2. The value of “digging in.”
There’s no qualifying gold on the surface. You have to dig deeper to find the good answers.
Junior reps will often accept surface-level answers at face value and move on to their next qualifying question. Mostly because they don’t know what they should be listening for.
A senior sales rep, on the other hand, knows that not all answers are created equal. So when they hear an answer that is vague or doesn’t add up with the other information being presented, they’re ready to ask a follow-up question to dig deeper.
As a result, the senior rep will discover far more information about the prospect’s potential to become a customer.
Now, you might be asking yourself, what’s the big deal?
As long as I ask the qualifying questions that my company puts into my script, isn’t that enough?
Won’t the prospect get annoyed if I ask them too many questions?
No, the prospect won’t get annoyed, as long as you do a good job of asking follow-up questions that make the conversation flow.
And no, the point of qualifying is not just for the sake of complying with company policy.
One of the main reasons that we qualify is to gather “ammo” for battling objections later on in the sales encounter.
If you don’t gather enough “ammo” by asking follow-up questions during qualifying, you’ll lose the objection battle every time.
Click here to read more about using qualifying to battle objections.
Here’s an example of asking a follow-up question to dig in on a vague answer.
Salesperson:
“So, Carol, when would you like to get this program started?”
Prospect:
“Sometime in the next couple months.”
That’s a vague, surface-level answer.
Knowing this, let’s dig in for a more specific answer …
Salesperson:
“Carol, did you have a more specific date in mind?”
Prospect:
“No, not really.”
Don’t give up. Keep digging.
Salesperson:
“I know you mentioned you need to have the program in place before your grand opening. Remind me again, when is the opening?”
Prospect:
“Oh, that’s right. Yea, it’s on July 4th.”
Salesperson:
“Got it, so would you say we should have the program started by July 4th?”
Prospect:
“Yea, we should actually start it the week before the opening.”
Salesperson:
“What about July 1st?”
Prospect:
“Yea, that sounds good.”
It’s easier to “dig in” during qualifying at the beginning of the call.
Because at the end of the call, Carol will be on the defensive.
Prospects are more shy about sharing information when they know it might be used against them as leverage for closing the deal. This is especially true after the salesperson has already revealed the price and asked for the sale.
In the context of our example, now that we’ve asked follow-up questions to dig deeper during qualifying, we’ll have a better response prepared when Carol gives us a timeline objection at the end of the call.
Use info gathered from qualifying to battle objections at the end of the call.
For example, at the end of the call, Carol says,
“I want to wait and just think about it.”
There’s the timeline objection.
If all we knew was that Carol wanted to get started sometime in the next couple months (her original answer before digging in), then we might have had trouble battling this objection (because Carol’s sense of urgency is ambiguous).
But because we dug deeper and asked follow-up questions during qualifying, now we’re prepared to handle the objection by expediting Carol’s timeline and setting firm next steps …
Salesperson:
“No worries, and remind me, when was your grand opening again?”
Prospect:
“July 4th.”
Salesperson:
“Okay, and you said you wanted to have the program start the week before the opening, right?”
Prospect:
“That’s right.”
Salesperson:
“Okay, well today is June 22nd. And it will take a couple days for our team to get everything set up. So what if we set our onboarding appointment for June 27th.”
Prospect:
“That sounds fine.”
Salesperson:
“Great! And all we need today is just a credit card to put on file. You won’t be charged until your onboarding date. Do you know which card you want to use?”
Being able to handle an objection like this at the end of the call, is only possible if you qualify correctly at the beginning of the call.
If you dig into shallow answers with follow-up questions during qualifying, you will have all the “ammo” you need to battle objections when you ask for the sale.
Click here to read more about using qualifying to battle objections.