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More Questions, Better Questions

Written by: Sandy Schussel

Article Overview: If you want more clients to say "yes," try asking more questions. Clients love to buy, they just hate to be sold.

More Questions, Better Questions

Blake, an attorney in Michigan, wrote me last week about his problem getting prospective clients to engage his services.

"I find out what their situation is," he writes, "and then I explain very carefully what I'll be doing for them."

"Then they ask about price. I tell them my hourly rate, which is competitive, but they say they want to think about it...and then, I don't hear from them again."

Professionals like Blake often don't spend enough time developing a relationship with their clients, customers or patients. They know their work. They know how to diagnose problems, and they know what the most likely solutions are. But they don't know what their prospective clients really need: someone to hear them out, sympathy, empathy and validation.

Here are some suggestions that might help you "close" more clients:

1. Ask more and better questions. "Situation" questions are essential for you in order to enable you to do your work, but they have relatively low value to a prospective client who already knows her situation.

How does the situation make her feel? Why does she feel that way? What result would she like to see from working with you? How will that make her feel better?

These kinds of questions don't necessarily add anything for you to analyze, but they help you create a bond with your new client.

2. Find out if there's a commitment before you talk about fees. Ask if she's receiving value from the discussion and if she has questions for you. Ask if she'd be interested in having you work with her.

3. Find out what is causing them to hesitate. If she says, "Let me think about it," find out what she agrees with and narrow down what her concerns are. Does she have reservations about your abilities? Is she looking for a better price? Its okay (it’s important) to ask these questions.

If you want more clients to say "yes," try changing your interview style by asking more questions. This will allow you to develop that essential relationship with your clients, customers, or patients.

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Article Tags: empathy, hourly rate, interview style, prospective client, prospective clients, relationship, situation questions, sympathy, validation



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Re: Marketing ideas? - Questions will set you free... And make you Rich [quote="KH_Global":349pds7c]Just ask ask ask. That is it.[/quote:349pds7c]
Re: Contact Information - Another idea would be to have an email form in place to accept "ticketed" inquires (if people are afraid of spammers seeing their email address). However, I hate how some sites try to persuade you out of sending an email by bombarding you with lists of "Frequently Asked Questions & Answers" as I find they're rarely helpful.
Synergy and Other Creative Insights - Truth is that there is [u:2iwgooi1]C[/u:2iwgooi1]ollaboration - on a formal basis and [u:2iwgooi1]c[/u:2iwgooi1]ollaboration which is informal. Let's say that you have a great new product. Before it launches you get loads of buddies in the same business as you to tear it apart and let you refine it. Creative people will get others in as well. people from outside the business - or those who are in the business who might not have anything to do with it and seek their input - listening hard. These aren't focus groups, they are way beyond this - they are real outsiders and thus have very open minds, asking the dumb, the stupid questions, which are often the most valuable. Questions like these help me be a good coach too! I once worked in a business where the backshop (the store room) was always untidy. They held a team meeting and had the cook in as well (you know the one who ran the employee facility). She knew nothing about the storeroom and its processes, but boy did she ask some tricky questions of them. Sometimes, little 'c' collaboration is real good at the mocro level, without which the big 'C' collaboration would be worthless.
Re: link exchange strategy - [quote="RussellWebb":2xvcpjwz]Questions that pop into mind... Does PR ranking effect 'who' you would exchange links with? Do you really need thousands of links to rank higher in the SE's? Are one-way links better than reciprocal links?[/quote:2xvcpjwz] Hi Russell, While I know you posed these SEO questions for Samin, I thought I'd help you get the conversation started by putting in my 2 cents. 1.) I think it's all about getting "quality" and high ranking/trusted sites (that are related to the content of your site and industry) to link back to you. 2.) While it's somewhat true that the more links you have the better, I'd suggest focusing on "quality" links rather than quantity. Poor sites and ones that aren't related to your field can actually hurt your rankings. 3.) Absolutely, it's much better if someone only links to you. However, reciprocal links are still good for those who have just launched a new site and are getting started. If I'm wrong about any of these comments, please feel free to correct me.
How to protect my trade mark? - Affirmative commercial action might be, for example, to increase spending on advertising, in order to make better known his use of the mark, or it might be to attend a national trade show associated with his business for the same purpose. Maybe he's just been lazy and hasn't had any serious lack of means. None of the questions was rhetorical. But I readily can imagine that you found the questions irrelevant to the legal discussion. I do not think that they are. Questions about the fairness of outcomes seem to me to be always relevant to legal discussions, with this reservation: that usually nothing can be done about clusters of unfair outcomes from within a particular legal system (ours, or canon Law, the Sharia, continental statute law, etc.) at a particular time. They need to get addressed politically first. In this connection, a lobby-related forum might be useful. Many patent and trademark related issues get very heavily lobbied. It's not that I found your points irrelevant to the legal discussion, it's just that most of your points missed the mark. I represent the "little guy" almost exclusively, and my clients have been very able to protect their marks against infringers large and small. You should educate yourself on the way things actually work, not how you think they might work, and then come back for a real discussion. I'd gladly discuss policy issues with you.


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