Ask a Question!

A few weeks back, I posted a photo on LinkedIn and asked folks to respond.  The photo was of nine cereal boxes, sitting on the kitchen counter, with 3 empty cereal bowls in front of the boxes.  The question was “What is my Hurt?”

Not everyone responded through LinkedIn, some approached me in person and answered my question.  Many of the answers were about the cereal:  “You have too much cereal”, “Your kids don’t like the choices of cereal”, “Your cereal is getting stale.”  For those, I am sure they saw the picture and inferred that the Hurt, the problem, was that I had too much cereal – which was NOT the case.  In our house we usually go through cereal pretty fast, my kids usually pick out the cereal, and even though I live in Seattle, the cereal usually stays pretty crisp.

Some folks asked me the question;  “What do you mean by “Hurt”? Others, not falling for the trap, asked me questions trying to uncover/discover what my Hurt/problem was that I was asking about.  “Mr. Williams, can you tell me how much pantry space all of those cereals take up? Is there anything else you might want to use some of that space for, instead of one or more of the nine boxes of cereal?”

Oh, the power of a question!  The question has power, IF you sit back and listen to the answer.  In Sales, you need to engage the customer, dialogue with them, get to “know” them. How to engage? Show genuine interest in the customer, ask questions about their business, their life, their world.  When you ask relevant questions and LISTEN to their answers, you will discover the TRUE Hurt that will motivate that customer to make a decision.

Or, you could just start talking to the customer, about things YOU are interested in, like selling them a new widget. Pretty soon they start disengaging and looking for “ways to escape”.

Ok, back to the photo.  After a few of days, it felt like I was playing 20 questions and I was about to win.  No one had guessed the “true” Hurt and many of the discovery questions, while great questions, were off the mark.  Then came a couple of follow up questions, “Do you use milk in your cereal? or  Where’s the milk?”  Bingo, Right Question!  So the persons asking the question, sat back and listened to my answer.  In Sales, the question should provoke a discussion of the customer’s Hurt.  The idea is to get the customer to talk about their issues…not you talking about your ideas, features, functions.

The implied Hurt, based on the cereal boxes in the picture, is that I did not have any milk for the kid’s breakfast and, I am sure, if I had a friend on LinkedIn that sold milk, I would have gotten a sales call.

My response to “Where’s the milk?” was:  “It wasn’t that I didn’t have any milk.  It was that I had way too much milk and I had no room to store it in the house – the fridge was full.”  The truth is that the morning the picture was taken, I received 6 half-gallons of milk, which is normal for the week.  However, I still had 3 half-gallons of milk from the prior week.  Without discovery questions, you would have never uncovered this Hurt/problem.

This was not a planned LinkedIn exercise.  In fact, by setting out the choices of cereal, I was trying to influence my kid’s decision on what they would eat for breakfast that morning.  They had been opting for oatmeal and yogurt for the week and those choices created my Hurt.

In sales, you do not want to sell against some inferred Hurt.  Ask the Question, provoke a discussion, sit back and take the time to listen.  You may discover the “Hurt” that will power your customer’s decision process to select your solution.