- The absolute best salespeople I've ever worked with
they were not big talkers,
they were great at these two things;
they were great at asking questions.
And they were great at just listening.
So often we think that selling is about convincing someone
that this is why you need what we're selling.
It's really not.
And so on this episode based on everything that I've learned
from some of the best salespeople,
based on being a founder
that learned how to embrace selling,
I'm gonna give you the three most powerful questions
that you need to be asking
in your sales conversations.
Intro.
(bright music)
What's up everybody welcome to Unstoppable.
I'm TK and on this channel, I help SAAS founders like you
grow your SAAS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
If you are new to this channel, welcome.
I drop a video like this three times a week,
with actionable strategies to grow your SAAS business.
So you sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon
that way you'll get notified
every single time I drop an episode with The TK Energy.
Also, if you're part of our community already
a really fast growing community, I'm so excited about it.
If you're part of my SAAS, go to Market Coaching Program.
Welcome, it's so awesome to see you over here.
The one thing every great SAAS founder did,
every SAAS founder that wants to scale his or her company
needs to do is embrace selling.
Embrace selling.
Now whether you're selling your product
to a prospective customer,
whether you are selling your company to a VP candidate
that you are trying to convince that person
to join your company,
or you're selling investors to actually fundraise
and raise that next round of funding.
Regardless, you have to get great at selling.
You have to embrace selling.
This is something that I learned and I embraced selling.
I learned from some of the best out there.
Now in this episode, I'm gonna dig into
based on everything that I learned,
I'm gonna dig into the three questions
you just need to be asking
in every single sales conversation.
And when you do this, you and your team
will be able to close more deals
and grow your SAAS business faster.
So be excited to get to the principal's
go and smash that like button.
And let's go to principle number one.
So principle number one,
and I covered this in a prior video.
In a prior video, I gave you the overall structure
on how to run a killer sales call.
If you missed it, you can check it out here.
You don't have to go right now.
I'll link to it below.
But I kind of teased this one.
The first question,
the first most impactful question
you need to be asking is why.
Here's the thing, someone said yes to you.
They added time in their own calendar
and they decided to meet with you.
Whether it's an in-person meeting or a Zoom meeting,
more likely a Zoom meeting these days.
They decided that this was important enough.
And the most important question you could ask to them
as you're starting this conversation is,
Hey, I know you have a lot going on.
I appreciate your time.
Why did you decide to prioritize this?
What is going on in your world
that made this a priority that is important to you?
Tell me a little bit more about that.
You can ask this question in your own way.
You can ask why in your own way,
but when you start to frame the conversation around this,
it shows a few things.
One, it means that you're really seeking to understand
this person that you're meeting with.
Two, you respect their time and appreciate them
taking time out of their day to meet with you.
And three, you're giving them an opportunity
to just like tell you like,
Hey, here's what's top of mind for me.
Here's a problem I'm having.
Because you're better off aligning with the true reason
that they're meeting with you instead of trying to pretend
and assume that your most important reason is their reasons.
So number one thing,
number one most important powerful question
you can be asking is why did you decide to meet with us?
What got this and the top of your priority list.
What's going on in your world.
Tell me more about that.
The second question,
this is the second principle that you need to be asking.
And this kind of dovetails from the first question
is where are you now?
Now, suppose you're selling marketing software
or you're selling HR software or sales software
whatever SAAS business you're selling,
there's some situation that this ideal buyer
that this person that's meeting with you is in right now.
And what you wanna do is understand their world.
So often we jump into digging into,
Hey, here's why we were amazing.
And here's why we're awesome.
And you're probably having these 50 problems.
You're better off really asking them,
Hey, tell me more about your role.
What's going on.
And we employ these questions
in our own sales process here at Unstoppable,
when people join The Go To Market Program.
So literally it was like,
Hey, like what's going on in your world?
Tell me where you are in your business.
How's growth going?
What are your top priorities?
Because all of these questions help us get a common ground
on understanding each other.
And more importantly, it helps the sales person,
you in this case, or me, really understand
what's going on in their world
so we can align our message, our product
the problems we solve best
based on what's literally top of mind for them.
So question number two is where are you now?
Now, before I go into question number three,
the third, most powerful.
And by the way, I also have a bonus question for you.
So before we go into the number three
and the bonus question, let me just pause here for a second.
If you're starting to see the power in this,
if you started to understand,
there's one thing I want you to take away is
the best salespeople in the world are not the best sellers.
What they are truly is,
they know how to ask the right questions
and listen for the answer, listen for clues
so they can align the sales process to the buyer.
If it starts to the power in this
can I just get a yes in the comments below,
that way I know you're getting value.
Also smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm
if you haven't already.
Now, the other thing I have for you is
if you're building out your SAAS business
you're building out your strategy to grow,
I invite you to download
my five point SAAS growth strategy guide.
It's completely free.
It goes into a lot more detail
into the key pillars that drives growth for a SAAS business.
I'll tell you more about it in this video
but let's go to question and principle number three.
So principle number three, the question number three
you wanna be asking is what does success look like?
This is super important, right?
We wanna ask them,
here's the thing I keep telling everyone
and super important is,
people don't really wanna buy more software.
They have enough software, no one wakes up in the morning
and say gee, I wish we had more software.
They want results.
They want a certain result.
They wanna have success.
They want accomplish their goals,
regardless of whether you're doing a B2B purchase
or a B2C purchase.
So you wanna be asking is,
Hey, I understand where you are right now.
I understand some of the challenges you have,
some of the priorities you have.
Tell me what success looks like?
What does success look like?
Another way to say this that I like using is,
What are you optimizing for?
And sometimes I put a timeframe it,
like in the next six months
what does success look like for you?
What does success look like
for your go-to-marketing machine
or your sales process or your marketing process?
When you do this, it helps you understand
whether the goals that they have are realistic,
whether they've thought through the goals
and gets the customer to also think like,
well, you're right.
What do I want?
Because sometimes, and this is true for us as humans
we get so enamored in the problems,
we haven't thought about, well, instead of these problems,
instead of dealing with these things,
what do I want instead?
And so when you ask them, what does success look like?
And sometimes you add a timeframe.
What does successful career in six months,
everything becomes a lot more in the possibilities zone.
And you get excited about like, Oh, actually, you know
success looks like where we're growing at a certain clip.
We have a really, well-defined go to market machine.
We know exactly where our customers are coming from.
We know how to do attribution.
Whatever you're selling,
like you'll start to pick up on those keywords.
And based on these three questions, why are you here?
Like literally what's top of mind.
Why is this a priority,
to what's going on in your business right now,
to where do you wanna be?
What does success look like?
Between these three questions, I've seen AEs.
I've seen CEOs that are incredible at selling.
I've done this myself, really frame the sales presentation,
really frame how I approach the sales process with them
because I truly understand what's going on in their world.
And you'll find for the real buyers, the real buyers.
They want to tell you these things
because they want to be understood.
They don't want you to just pitch to them
your standard pitch.
They want to tell you like,
Hey, here's what's going on in my world.
Maybe you can help.
Now, there are some people
when we start to ask these questions, they'll get flippant.
They'll get angry.
They'll say, can we just get to the demo already?
I got news for you.
Nine times out of 10
those people are not gonna ever gonna buy.
They're just not gonna buy.
And you know, if the number one trait
for successful salespeople
is that they know to ask the right questions and listen.
The number two trait
is they know how to sniff out a bad deal.
And if someone gets flippant
when you ask these kinds of questions in a respectful way
then they're probably not gonna buy, probably broke.
The probably don't even have a budget.
That's nine times out of 10 is what happens.
So I do have a bonus one for you.
I have a bonus question that you can ask
and that you should ask.
If you haven't already smashed that like button
for the YouTube algorithm.
The bonus question I have for you is you should ask,
what's holding you back.
This is bonus.
And it's actually an essential one.
I ask this all the time in every sales process I've been in.
So if you understand their, why, why they prioritize it.
You understand what's going on in their world.
Usually you dig into the problems that they're experiencing.
And you ask them like,
what does success look like?
Between where you are now?
And what does success look like?
There's some things that are holding them back
and they know what they are.
So if you can get them to just talk to you about,
Hey, what's holding you back.
Well, we don't know how to do this,
or we can't scale fast enough
or we just don't have the data,
or it's too much we don't have the processes
to actually scale this fast.
Whatever it is, they'll tell you.
And based on that, they'll dovetail into your manifesto,
your strategic message,
they'll dovetail into your demo.
All those things will start to come together
really, really nicely, which is super powerful.
So in conclusion, those are the three and a half
or rather four more, I decided to over-deliver on this one.
Hopefully it's okay to over deliver on these videos.
Four most important sales questions to ask,
most powerful questions to ask
to really transform your sales process and close more deals.
Number one, why, why do you prioritize this?
Tell me what's going on in your world.
Where are you now?
Number three, what does success look like?
And number four, what's holding you back?
And based on that you can really craft
the sales presentation in the sales process.
Now, if you wanna dig deeper
into how to actually structure your sales call,
how to think about the demo and all those things,
be sure to check out this video, I'll link to it below.
Goes a little bit into detail
on how to structure your sales call so that they're killer.
Also, if you're scaling your SAAS business.
If you're at that point where you're looking
to really get the growth going,
I encourage you to download
my 5-Point SAAS Growth Strategy Guide.
It's completely free.
And it goes into detail
on exactly how I create a one-page strategy to grow
for any SAAS business.
Just go to get unstoppable.com/strategy,
it's completely free.
Or you can follow the link below for that as well.
Lastly, if you got value from this video,
be sure to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It just means a lot to me and my team.
We put a lot of love into these videos.
If you haven't already, I drop an episode like this
three times a week, so be sure to hit the subscribe button
and that bell icon, that way you'll get notified
every single time I drop an episode.
And lastly, remember everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business
but when you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK, and I'll see you in the next episode.
(bright upbeat music)