What if one simple approach in your first customer conversation could make them instantly want to buy from you?
Most businesses focus on qualifying leads to filter out the wrong customers—but they often miss a hidden opportunity. In this episode, we dive into how asking the right qualifying questions can do more than assess fit: it can make customers excited about working with you, building trust and connection before a single quote is sent.
By listening, you’ll discover how to:
- Ask questions that uncover what truly matters to your customer and what will make them thrilled with the result.
- Guide your customers through articulating their goals and desires, creating a positive emotional connection.
- Use their responses to reinforce their excitement, making them see you as the partner they want from the very first interaction.
Press play now to learn the one thing you can do on your first call that gets customers excited and ready to buy.
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Episode Transcript:
Ben Wright:
In this episode, we are going to unpack how you can get customers to instantly want to buy from you before you even meet them in the trade sales landscape.
Intro:
Welcome to Sales Growth Made Simple, the show helping seven to eight figure trade, construction and industry sales and business leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster.
I’m your host, Ben Wright, a leader who has been building businesses and sales teams just like you for the last 20 years.
Ben Wright:
In this episode, we are going to go through the one thing, yes, just the one thing that you can do when first talking with your customers or qualifying them to get them to instantly want to buy from you in your business. Big statement, one thing that you can do to help customers want to instantly buy from you within your business. Of course, there are lots of one things we can do within a business to help us really grow.
However, for me, I like to focus really intently on some of the smaller progress over perfection ideas that we can roll into our business that make significant impacts in moving the dial or growing our sales. What gets often overlooked is the first contact, so that first phone call communication that we have with a customer after they make a lead. Of course, that’s the time when we’re qualifying our customers but for me, what so often gets missed here is this beautiful option or this beautiful chance to have customers wanting to instantly buy from you.
What does this look like? Well, in a word, it comes down or in two words, it comes down to your qualifying questions. What we’re asking our customers to not only decide if they’re a fit for us but to get them thinking really positively about us as a fit for them. I’ve spoken a couple of times, particularly over the last week or so, around customers often making their supplier choices, particularly in your residential business and your smaller business settings, how they often make their decisions in the first moments that they meet with a supplier or before they even receive a quote.
What I love about the opportunity with qualifying questions is that we’re able to not only decide if a customer meets who we’re looking for, if they’re our ideal customer. Is the business the right size? Is the home in the right location? Are they looking to spend the right amount of money? Do they have the appropriate lead time requirements? Are they realistic in what their budget might be? We’re going to ask those questions but we’re also getting to generate some excitement at the other end for the customer. The businesses that we see do this really well and to repeat, we’ve worked with thousands now, sales and business leaders, over the last few years and certainly dozens and dozens and dozens of businesses across that time.
Anyone from sole operators through to the largest sales team we’ve worked with has just under 60 people and we’ve worked with quite a few teams in the 30s to 60s. So, a real diverse spread of businesses we work with but the businesses that absolutely nail this part ask qualifying questions that really get the customer thinking about what they want and these are not just questions about where do you live, what are you looking for, but these are questions like what does a great result look like for you? What is something that you’re going to look back on for the next 10 years raised to mind for you? What are the type of things that when you complete this project you’re going to think, wow, that’s really made the difference? What’s a result for you that is going to help you think this is the best project or I am so happy we’ve got what we’ve gone with? Is there anything that’s so important to you that it’s going to impact the quality of this project and how you think about after it’s completed? Are there things that you really don’t want to see happen in this project that we need to try and avoid? So, all of those types of questions there are around getting the customer to think and articulate what is special for them, what’s important for them, what are the things that are going to really move the dial in their minds and essentially as the partner in this instance across that sales period, you’re the one that is there helping them quantify this. Often when we can be meeting with people and you can think about perhaps examples in your own life or with your children or with your friends, when you get them to think of the idea or come to a conclusion or assist them along a process, you get dragged along with the positivity of that part.
If we’re able to help our children, my daughter just wanted her first triathlon. She’s six years old. She woke up on a Wednesday, said, Dad, I want to do one.
By the afternoon, I’d set her up a little course. We punched out a 50-metre swim. I think she did about three Ks on the bike and four or five hundred metres on the run.
She had so much fun, but she associated me with that journey. When she talks about triathlons now, it’s conversations that she has with Daddy, which is great. It makes me feel really good, but also I know that I’m now part of a fledgling triathlon career and I hope she’s a better athlete than me.
I think the message I’m trying to say here is that when we can help our customers along their journey to clarify what they’re looking for, we get swept up with that positive emotion. The way we can do that, of course, is to repeat back to our customers what they’ve said to us. Repeat back to them some of the key takeaways.
Repeat back to them some of their key goals. If they’re looking to have some new flooring laid down in their house and they decide that the colour of the flooring as well as perhaps the sound it makes, and yes, I’ve certainly heard plenty of customers in the flooring space where they’re actually quite particular with floating floorboards around the sound that it makes as you walk on it, is for these customers to articulate, hey, we’re looking for a light colour. What type of colour? Is it a light brown? Is it a whitewash? Is it a really light kind of tan colour? What are the types of colours that you’re looking for that are going to make this really work for you? Then you’re showing samples, for example.
The second piece here around the type of sound it’s making, okay, what are you wanting it to sound like? For some people, they want whisper quiet floors and for others, they want that beautiful sound of wood when you walk on it. By having those conversations with customers to be able to help them articulate and then repeating it back to them, that’s when we’re seeing businesses, really good businesses we work with, get that instant connection with their customers. So that’s it for today.
All around qualifying questions when we first meet a lead and making sure we’re unpacking what’s important to customers and helping them through that journey. Very grateful for you listening today. Thank you.
I hope you’re leaving this podcast today with your curiosity well and truly spiked around how you can help talk your customers through that process. It can be a little bit tricky. If you’re in any doubt, please get in touch with us.
Otherwise, we’re dropping episodes three times a week. Really looking forward to the next one. That’s it for today.
Bye for now.
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