In the stage of sales negotiation, many sales personnel also know how to use questions to win the initiative, but because they do not pay attention to the way of asking questions or do not follow certain principles when asking questions, they cannot guarantee satisfactory results. Only by asking questions in principle can the effect be guaranteed. The following is a collection of ways and principles of asking questions to customers for your reference.
There are different ways to ask questions. Only when specific questions are analyzed, can the corresponding questions ensure the effect.
Generally speaking, the following methods can be used to ask questions of customers:
1. Closed questions
A closed question is a question that elicits a positive or negative answer within a certain range. This kind of question can enable the questioner to obtain specific information or exact answers, for example, "These are the conditions. Have you decided?"
However, closed questions limit customers' answers. Customers can only choose from limited answers, such as "Do you think it is more reliable to cooperate with large companies?" "Do you have time today?" "Can I leave relevant information about the product?" and so on. For these questions, customers can usually only answer "yes", "no", "right", "wrong", "yes" or "no" and other short answers, so that customers not only feel very passive, but also feel interrogated, and sales personnel can only get extremely limited information from customer answers. Therefore, it is better not to use closed questioning unless it is very necessary.
2. Open ended questions
Unlike closed questions, open questions do not limit the answers to questions, but allow customers to freely play around the topic of conversation according to their own preferences. Open questions can not only make customers feel natural and open, but also help sales staff understand more effective customer information according to customer conversations. Not only that, customers often feel relaxed and happy when they don't feel constrained, which is obviously conducive to further communication and cooperation between both parties.
Open ended questions usually use the following typical questions:
(1) "What..." You can ask: "What advice do you have for us?" "What trouble have you encountered?" "What other ideas do your partners have?" "What are your views on this product?" "What advantages do you think this product has most attractive to you?" "What changes will happen to your work if you adopt this product?"
(2) "Why..." You can ask: "Why do you like this product so much?" "Why are you so cheerful today?" "Why do you face such a serious problem?"
(3) "How" or "How" you can ask: "What trend do you think the situation will develop?" "How can we meet your requirements?" "How do you usually deal with these problems?" "How do you hope this matter will be finally solved?"
3. Guided questioning
Guided questioning is to ask some suggestive questions that have strong implications for the answers. This kind of question almost makes the respondent answer according to the answers designed by the questioner without any choice, which has undeniable guidance. For example, "Speaking of now, I think that... you will agree, won't you?"
4. Exploratory questions
Exploratory questioning is a kind of question that extends and tests the opinions or answers of customers. This kind of question can not only explore more information, but also play a role in detection. For example, "We want to reduce the price properly, can you increase the purchase quantity?"
5. Confirmatory questions
A confirmatory question is a question that is rephrased to confirm or supplement the customer's reply. This method is often used on critical issues at critical moments, which can not only further obtain clarification, confirmation and confirmation of issues from the other party, but also explore more sufficient information. For example, "Based on your statement just now, I understand... Is this the case?"
In order to effectively promote the success of the transaction, the salesperson should implement the following principles when asking questions:
1. Objectivity
The principle of objectivity is that the main purpose of asking questions should be to understand the customer's real ideas, rather than to induce the customer to make a commitment or force the customer to accept the salesperson's ideas.
2. Phased principle
The phased principle is that when asking questions to customers, they should distribute the questions at different times to avoid continuous questions, which will make customers dislike the salesperson.
3. Encouraging principle
The encouraging principle is to encourage customers to give more in-depth and detailed answers when asking questions. If the salesperson only has a simple answer of "yes" or "no", then such a question is not appropriate. Because you can't get more information through "Yes" and "No".
4. Principle of clarity
The principle of clarity is to make the questions raised easy to be understood and answered by customers. It is necessary to avoid asking too complex and lengthy questions, that is, simple and clear questions, not wordy and sloppy.
It is necessary to pay attention to the way and principle of asking questions to customers. Every salesperson should have such experience that questioning is an important form of language marketing. Proper questioning can play a great role in the marketing process. Paying attention to the way of asking questions and abiding by the principle of asking questions, on the one hand, can enable customers to participate in the negotiation process, which also shows that the salesperson respects and cares for customers; On the other hand, it can encourage customers to concentrate, better understand and remember the information sent by the salesperson, and lay the foundation for stimulating purchase desire; At the same time, it can also test the accuracy of prior judgment. Therefore, sales personnel should always pay attention to the above methods and principles in the process of asking customers questions, so as to use them flexibly. If we can pay attention to the way, observe and give consideration to these principles in every question to customers in the whole marketing process, then we will not be far away from a successful transaction.
