Issue 286 - Creating Prospect Questions
By Ron La Vine

The Prospect Questions Exercise illustrates the
concept that different buyers have different
responsibilities and concerns. Working through
this exercise will better prepare you to ask
questions that will identify what is of value to
each type of buyer or influencer. As you know,
you do not have the same conversation with the
C-Level as you might with the Manager of one
her departments. The same applies to different
lines of business.

This exercise can be completed two ways. One
focuses upon the different levels of contacts such
as a CXO, Director, Manager and End User. The
other approach is to focus on different lines of
business such as a VP of Sales, CFO, VP of
Customer Service and a VP of Human
Resources.

STEP ONE:
PREPARE INDUSTRY SPECIFIC PROSPECTING
QUESTIONS EXERCISE
Break into small teams to prepare the
Prospecting Questions for different levels within a
single line of business such as I.T. or by different
titles of different lines of business.

Work with only one solution at a time. If you do
not encounter any of the levels of people during
your sales cycle or if they use different titles,
either eliminate the ones not used or change the
titles to meet the ones used in your specific
industry. Begin with listing the titles. Use the titles
related to your industry.

STEP TWO:
LIST THE RESPONSIBILITIES
Select a scribe for your group to write out the
answers on a white board. Choose another
individual to enter the completed data into an
Excel spreadsheet. This will enable the
spreadsheets to be emailed to all the participants
in the exercise. List the responsibilities of an
individual in the "Responsibilities" column.

STEP THREE -
CONTACT CONCERNS, NEEDS, CHALLENGES, PROBLEMS OR PAINS
For each responsibility, the team should consider
the Concerns, Needs, Challenges, Problems or
Pains that each level of contact or line of
business may have. List these under the next
column. After listing these responsibilities, the
group should consider which solution best
addresses each contact's concerns and why.

EXAMPLES OF CONTACT CONCERNS, NEEDS,
CHALLENGES, PROBLEMS OR PAINS USING WHAT IS
V.A.L.U.E.D. BY EXECUTIVES
Very secure
Adaptable
Low total cost of ownership
Usability or ease of use
Efficient and effective
Dependable

Accuracy
Interoperability
Bottom line
Accessibility
Managing change
Cost of implementation
Security
Scalability
Cost of capital
Security system
Speed of deployment
Cost justification
Industry compliant
Can add or decrease capacity
Budget availability or access to funds
Amount of perceived risk
Net payback period and/or ROI
Usability or ease of use
Efficient and effective
Dependable
Ease of use
Effect on the system
Manageability
Impact on job performance
Increased head count
Contractual terms
Usefulness
Overall Effectiveness
Cost of failure
Training or retraining costs
Amount of time to implement
Reliability and consistency
Get more done or less
Performance
Type of guarantee(s)
Make my job easier or harder. Faster or slower
Productivity. Up time performance
Work done on time and on budget

(Continued Below)

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Dear Ron,

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(Continued from Above)

STEP FOUR:
WHAT QUESTIONS WOULD YOU ASK TO GUIDE THE CONVERSATION TOWARDS YOUR SOLUTION'S STRENGTHS?

Next, work across the sheet by starting with the
titles and responsibilities followed by the
concerns for each contact level or line of
business. For example, a CFO is usually
concerned about the costs involved in making a
major capitol investment to acquire additional
equipment.

His decision would hinge on
accurately forecasting the demand for his product
and the different levels of production needed to
meet that demand. If he has to buy more
equipment, when it is not in use, it costs his
organization money. This in turn has an effect on
his organization's bottom line in terms of
increasing costs, which decrease profits.

Let us say one of the CFO's tasks is to control
the organization's costs as the levels of
production rise and fall. Now let us assume your
solution has a specific feature that enables the
prospect's existing equipment to scale up or
down quickly to meet the needs of production. If
the prospect gains the ability to use his existing,
equipment to scale up and down, as needed then
he can delay the major capital investment
purchase of having to buy more equipment. This
means he can redirect those funds to other areas
of importance within his organization. What open-
ended questions would you ask to guide the
conversation towards your solution?

For example, you may ask, "How important is the
scalability of your equipment when it comes to
meeting your production goals?" Alternatively,
"How quickly does your current equipment scale
up and down to meeting your changing
production requirements?" "If you could increase
the scability of your existing equipment without a
further major capital investment, what would you
do with the capital you save?" Notice how these
questions drive the direction of the call towards
your solution's strength in the area of scalability.

List the questions in the Questions column.
Remember open-ended questions are used to
gain information (Who, What, Where, When, Why
and How) and close-ended questions (Correct,
Right, Okay) are used to confirm what was said
and gain agreement for action.

Complete the Contact Level Prospecting
Question Exercise form so you can be prepared
to use it when you ask questions of contacts at
different levels within an organization.

Weave the questions you create individually or as
a group in your conversations with prospects both
over the phone and face to face.

You will find examples of the exercise along with
blank forms. Click Here

Hope you found this informative, see you next time.

Until then. . .

Make it a great day and a successful week!

Ron

Member of the American Society for Training and Development (c) 2008 by Accelerated Sales Training, Inc. - Live Cold Call Sales Training Workshops. All rights reserved. www.ast-incorp.com

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