Key Questions for understanding your prospect
In relation to last week’s post of WECID (What Else Could I Do) that my competitors won’t do to win a piece of business – below are numerous questions to ask and answer about a prospect, prior to pitching your product or service to them. From your answers to these questions you can form your key message(s) that you want the client to retain and/or act upon.
If you’re leading a major pitch, you and your pitch team should answer all the questions as well additional questions I’ll share in next week’s post – plus other questions you believe are important to gain a deep understanding of the prospect/client.
Questions to ask and answer to understand a prospect/client prior to a pitch presentation (listed in no particular order)
1. Who are the key decision makers, key influencers and other influencers? 2. Have you done advanced Google searches on each of the people, their company and their competitors? (In Google you can click on the News button and get recent media articles about the person, company and their competitors) 3. What do you they want? 4. What do they need? 5. Why would they not accept your key message? 6. What is so important about what they want? 7. How would their operation look if they got what they wanted? 8. What would it be worth to them in dollars, status, less stress etc, if they ‘bought’ what you are ‘selling’?
9. What are they proud of/afraid of? (one question you can ask in your pre-pitch face to face meetings with a prospect to tap what he/she is proud of is this one: ‘What would have had to happen in your operation between now and the end of this financial year/calendar year for you to be proud of what you and your team have achieved?’) 10. What irritates them/excites them? 11. What are their hopes? 12. Whose opinion do they respect? 13. What do they think of your organisation/division/you/your people? – Can you alter these perceptions? 14. How direct or subtle should you be with this audience?
15. How can you use your past successes to help with this pitch? 16. What ‘style’ will you use; eg. laid back, formal or a combination of both?
The ‘how to’ for this post is this: Prior to your next client/prospect meeting choose relevant questions from the above list, to answer.