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Answer Your Buyers’ Key Questions & Make Your Sales Messaging Great

Written by: Michael Cannon

Article Overview: In this article, you'll learn what buying questions are and why they're the secret ingredient in the creation of crisp, effective sales messaging. If your messaging is, well, mushy, like that of so many other companies, take three minutes now to learn how to create great sales messaging and start increasing your win rates.

Answer Your Buyers’ Key Questions & Make Your Sales Messaging Great

Most sales and marketing executives and their teams don’t know their buyers’ key buying questions. That’s why survey data indicate that Sales considers over 50% of the collateral created by Marketing to be useless. And that’s why most marketing and sales people are consistently unable to articulate their value proposition.

**Sales Messaging is the Key to Improving Sales and Marketing Effectiveness**

The key to creating great sales messaging is knowing your buyers’ primary buying questions for each of the products and services you offer.

Typical buying questions you’ll need to answer when creating sales messaging for prospects include:

• Why should I meet with you?
• Why should I change what I currently do and buy a product or service like this?
• Why should I buy your solution rather than a competitive alternative?

**Why Buying Questions Are Important**

If the goal of great sales messaging is to create rapport and gain traction through the sales process, then answering a buyer’s buying questions is the best way to create alignment with buyers. This is true for several reasons:

1. The human mind works through inquiry. We process information and solve problems by posing and answering questions. So when we direct our messaging to answer a buyer’s questions, especially their unstated, internal questions, we create instant rapport. That is, the messaging resonates with the buyer, because it answers the precise questions they are asking themselves.

2. Questions attract and focus the mind’s attention. When we hear or read a question, we automatically begin trying to answer that question. It’s an unconscious, reflexive response. By framing your sales messaging in the context of answering the buyer’s question, buyers will automatically be attracted to read and internalize your messaging.

3. Answering buyers’ questions helps us sales and marketing folks focus our communications and get to the point. Without questions to answer, messaging tends to veer off course, and lack the specificity necessary to effectively communicate with buyers.

**Different Buyer, Different Buying Questions**

The first step in determining what buying questions your company needs to answer in order to be more competitive, is to identify the types of buyers you need to attract and win. The most common buyer types include prospects, customers, channel partners, analysts and investors. The second step is to identify each buyer’s primary buying questions.

We’ve already reviewed a typical prospect’s buying questions. Now notice the differences among the questions for each buyer type:

Customer’s Buying Questions
• Why should I keep doing business with you?
• Why should I upgrade to your new product or service?

Channel Partner’s Buying Questions
• Why should I distribute a product or service like this?
• Why should I distribute your product rather than a competitive alternative?

Analyst’s Buying Question
• Why is your product or service a great idea?

Investor’s Buying Question
• Why is your company a great investment opportunity?

Consider how different the answers to the prospect’s questions are compared to answers for the channel partner, for example. The prospect’s questions are about the business case for buying the product from your company. The channel partner’s buying questions are about the business case for a joint venture with your company.

It should be clear now why knowing which buying questions your company needs to answer can lead to a dramatic improvement in the quality of your messaging, and thus to a dramatic improvement in your company’s competitiveness and its win rates.

**Great Sales Messaging is Buyer-Centric**

In order for your sales messaging to be truly effective, it must be buyer-centric. Your sales messaging must provide a compelling and persuasive answer to your buyer’s primary buying questions for each of the products and services that you offer.

This means that the presentation you use for prospects will be different from the one you use for channel partners, which in turn will be different from the ones you use for analysts, investors, etc. If your slide deck is essentially the same for each of your buyer types, what you have is mushy messaging, not great sales messaging. More importantly, you have a tremendous opportunity to improve your company’s sales and marketing effectiveness now, by implementing great sales messaging.

Related Articles
  Five Ways to Test Your Sales Messaging for Greatness
  The Top Ten Principles of Great Sales Messaging
  Does Sales Messaging Fuel Your Product Life Cycle? It Should.
  Twisted But True: High-Quality B2B Marketing Messaging Dramatically Reduces Sales and Marketing Effectiveness - Assess Your Messaging with This Five-Point Checklist
  Gold and Silver Bullets: Critical Messaging for Successful Investor-Funded Firms

Article Tags: sales, sales messaging



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