The Three Levels of Questions to Uncover Buyer Needs
Lesson 6 from: How to Sell the Way Your Customer BuysShari Levitin
The Three Levels of Questions to Uncover Buyer Needs
Lesson 6 from: How to Sell the Way Your Customer BuysShari Levitin
Lesson Info
6. The Three Levels of Questions to Uncover Buyer Needs
Lessons
Class Introduction
25:41 2How the Consumer has Changed
18:50 3How to Build Trust and Connect with Anyone
36:00 4Special Guest Mario Martinez : A Party Without Pants
27:02 5The Power of Sales Questions
10:38 6The Three Levels of Questions to Uncover Buyer Needs
08:57 77 Motivators that Drive all Decision Making
20:04 8Discovery Hacks
35:07Listen So Hard it Hurts
22:58 10Link Customer Needs to Your Offer
04:03 11Stories That Sell
11:33 12Aim for the Punchline
31:17 13Hero's Journey
28:54 14Objections and Being Told 'NO'
17:26 15Neuroscience and Decision Making
25:00 16Changing Your Buyer's Emotional State
21:43 17Gaining Commitments and Creating Urgency
06:19 18The Five Commitments
33:48 19The Six Real Customer Objections
23:22 20Gaining Commitment & Removing Resistance
25:49 21Negotiation Techniques
28:03 22Tackle Your Tendencies
23:08 23The Growth Mindset
16:01Lesson Info
The Three Levels of Questions to Uncover Buyer Needs
Earlier I mentioned that it's not necessarily the number of questions that's so critical, but it's the types of questions that are so critical. And what I'm gonna share with you right now has been revelatory to all my students for the last 30 years, so I'm very excited to share it with you. If this is probably the crux of everything we're gonna do for the rest of the session. When I train in Mexico I say (speaking in foreign language). Did I say that right? (speaking in foreign language) This is where the pig twists its tail, all right? This is at the center of it all. It's a saying. So let's look at the different types of questions. There's three different types of questions we can ask our customers. The first type of question is what we call a skin question. Skin questions are surfacey, they're like skin. They're easy. You could probably get a lot of the skin information online. They're questions like where are you from? How many people in your company? How long have you been in busi...
ness? Again, depending on whether you're talking business to consumer or business to business, these are the types of questions that I call skin level or first level questions. Skin level questions is where 80% of your competitors stop. They just ask the skin, the surface level information. Once you're done asking skin level questions, you wanna dig deeper. You wanna get to the bone. Bone questions are, well, they're a little harder, right? They're bone questions. They've got a structure and bone questions reveal problems. You wanna ask questions that reveal problems that your customer is having. But not only do you wanna uncover the problems, you wanna uncover the implications of those problems. And this is huge and I'm gonna give you a quick example. When I was teaching at the University of Utah, I was a professor, an adjunct professor for the Business School, and one of the students there sold consulting and when the customer called in and they had five, six thousand dollar consulting packages they were selling. They were selling live training and coaching. And the customer called up and said, "Hi, we have a problem." Okay, so she's got the problem. "We need to train 30 of our reps, "how much are your courses?" Well, this salesperson said, "Well they're $5,000 a piece." Person on the other end said, "Well, but we've got 30 people to train." She said, "Yeah, that'll be $150,000." She says, "But we only have 20, 25 in our budget." "Ah, oh well," click. Now what could she have done? What could she have done? Well if she had dug a little bit deeper she would've said okay, so I've got this problem, she would've asked deeper questions. How is this problem affecting you? How is it affecting your business? So we round tabled this in our class, gave her some information and pretty soon she started writing down these questions. Her boss got back on the phone, called the client back and said, "So let me ask you this, "why is it that you need this training?" The customer says, "Uh, are you kidding me? "We got some real management issues. "We've had major turnover." Dug deeper, a deeper bone question, the implications of that problem. "Well, let me ask you this, a lot of turnover, "what does it cost you to hire new employees?" The answer? "Oh, I don't know what it costs us exactly, "I mean, when we've done any kinda study "it's 50, 60 thousand dollars and that doesn't "even hit the fact that it's terrible for our culture "and it's terrible for morale." "So how many people have you actually lost this year?" "Over 10." So now we have a $600,000 problem and a $150,000 solution. Well, she got the deal for all 30 of them, because the bone questions went deeper. And I'm telling you this because when selling B-to-B, and I know we've got B-to-B people in here and we've got B-to-C and we have business owners. When selling particularly business to business we not only need to get the problem, we need to get the business case for the problem. What does it mean? What are the implications of that problem and how can we show them monetarily how we can solve it? Very, very critical. So first type of question, skin question. That's the surface level question. Bone level question is where we uncover problems and implications of those problems. But what the best salespeople in the world do is they go past the skin, beyond the bones and into the customer's heart. Because that's the place sales are made. And in this day and age I can tell you it's the only place sales are made. So how do we do that? How do we ask these third level emotional or heart questions? And I can tell you this, generally, write this one down. Who, what, where, when questions are usually skin and bone questions. Why questions pierce the heart. And what you're looking for is one of two things. You're looking for what is their dominant buying motive, their true motivator? How do we, so we've got skin thoughts and facts, bone explanation elaboration problems and then we've got heart. You're looking for what I call a dominant buying motive which is either a fear of loss or a hope for gain. Now does this work in B-to-B? Absolutely, because there are people that run these corporations. So questions like how would this affect you personally? Why now, why is it so important to solve this problem? And you'll be amazed at what you hear. I can tell you for business owners, B-to-C, these third level questions are critical. At the end of the day there's seven key motivators that drive all of our decision making. People make emotional decisions and justify it with logic. We've heard that, we know that, but we don't always do that. Damasio did a study and he found that when a piece of the brain is missing in a human being not only can they not experience emotions such as sadness, joy and fear, they're incapable of making decisions, incapable. A lot of people tell me, "I don't make emotional decisions, no way. "All my decisions are logical." Let me just see a show of hands. Is there anybody here that feels that their decision making is mostly logical, anybody? All right, we're gonna do a fun little thing right now. Now you may believe that, but let's look at what are the emotional motivators. There is nothing more important to look at than why people buy your product. And I can tell you, people don't do that. They don't look at why emotionally would somebody buy it. If decision making, we talked at the beginning, how to sell the way customers buy. If decision making is based on emotion, doesn't it stand to reason we should look at what are the emotional reasons by which people decide?
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Karen Kennedy
Sheri had me at HELLO! Her content kept me engaged for the entire class. This class does not have nuggets of information, it has BOULDERS. Even an "old sales pro" like me found so many helpful hints and tips in Sheri's methodology. If you are a newbie to sales, search no more -- just take this course and you will have everything you need to be successful. Trust the process, follow the steps. It will work for you. I especially loved the subject matter guests who covered the topics of Digital Seling and Storytelling. Do not put off buying and viewing this class. Do it now! NOW! Sales are how people and companies get revenue. Get going on your pipeline of opportunities, connect with your Heart and SELL in a genuine way. Kudos to Sheri for this amazing class. I loved every minute.
a Creativelive Student
If you are an executive, business professional, or a salesperson who wants to improve your communications, negotiation, and sales skills --- acquire Shari Levitin’s course. Shari will show you how to better connect with customers, prospects, team members, and people from an authentic perspective. Shari Levitin’s class is filled with excellent frameworks, content, actionable exercises, insights, and knowledge that will help anyone to be better a salesperson in your professional and personal lives. I loved how Shari included other experts, such as Mario Martinez (digital sales evangelist), Lee Eisler (store telling framework and presentation skills), and Deb Calvert (how to stop selling and start leading to make extraordinary sales happen with results from her B2B research study).
Lisa Bournoutian
By sheer luck, I came across Shari's book, Heart and Sell, about a year ago and instantly recognized that her process was one that would align nicely with my B2C sales team. Having read her book, I knew I was in for a real treat coming to Creative Live and watching her deliver her content in person. Shari seamlessly weaved invaluable examples that creative artists, B2B and B2C entrepreneurs could all relate to, and in a way that was fun, engaging, and easy to understand. She has absolutely mastered the science of selling and the heart of connecting. If you haven't read the book, you're missing out, and if you've never seen Shari in action, it is an experience you'll never forget. This course is a perfect opportunity to not only dive right in and learn how to sell the way your customer buys, but to make the right CALL (Connect, Ask, Listen & Link) in your personal sales journey and watch your business grow.
Student Work
Related Classes
Business Basics