Identification of customer needs questions examples communication. How to identify customer needs: types of needs and sample questions. Benefits of open questions

I have six servants,

Agile, remote.

And everything I see around

I know everything from them.

They are at my behest

Are in need.

They are called How and Why, Who,

What, When and Where.

Richard Kipling

At this stage, the seller must find out the needs and requests of the client. The main tools for identifying needs are the technique of asking questions and the technique of active listening.

By asking questions and listening to the answers, you find the points of intersection between your commercial proposal and the interests of the client. The main task of the seller is to determine the real needs of the client and assess his readiness to buy.

The art of asking questions is something that most salespeople don't master. Ask the right questions and actively listen.

A customer's willingness to buy goes up significantly when you show genuine interest in their needs and give them the opportunity to feel valued.

Reasons to ask questions

To make the client feel important
To control the process of passing through the stages
To understand the needs and desires of the client
For possible objections

But do not turn the clarification of needs into an interrogation. It is advisable to ask no more than two questions in a row, followed by a generalization of what was heard.

Remember: it's not the person who talks more who controls the situation, but the one who asks the most good questions and listens better.

At this stage, questions are the main tool of the seller. All questions can be divided into several categories.

Closed questions

They are built in such a way that the choice of possible answers of the client is limited to two words “yes” and “no”. Closed questions limit the scope of possible answers. Closed questions allow you to quickly get the necessary information from the client. But they are high-risk issues. So in stores, a situation is widespread when, at the entrance, the seller asks the client: “Is there anything you can help with?” and in the vast majority of cases, the client answers: “No,” even if he needs help. There are many reasons for this. One of the main ones is that people do not want to take on any obligations when answering questions.

At the initial and final stages of the sales process, it is not recommended to ask closed questions, since the seller may receive an undesirable “no” answer to some of them.

Experienced salespeople often use a special kind of closed-ended question that can only be answered with “Yes.” These are the so-called "tailed" questions with a pre-programmed answer. The first part includes a statement that any normal person would agree with. The second part is different kinds an interrogative link, for example: "Don't you?", "Do you agree?", "Really? ", "Correctly?". For example, you say to a client:

- "Nobody wants to overpay, right, do they?"

The client will most likely answer: “yes”. Having received the first “yes”, it is necessary to receive the next “yes”. An experienced seller in this situation continues: “Therefore, when buying a phone, it is very important to choose the most favorable payment rate, do you agree?” And to such a question, a normal client, most likely, will answer in the affirmative. And this already makes it possible to talk about tariff plans with a positive customer in front of him. By asking this kind of questions, the seller controls the situation, predetermining the response of the client in advance.

Open questions

These questions begin with the words: what, how, what, how much, why, and I expect to receive a detailed answer. Open-ended questions help get the client talking.

Which camera do you like best?
Why?
Did you have a camera before? Which?
What did you like about it? What didn't you like?
What is important to you when choosing?
Do you need a large display? Big zoom?

The client, answering such questions, gives you information about his priorities, motives, thus simplifying the stage of collecting information.

Instead of open questions, you can use phrases like:
I don't quite understand, could you explain?
Please clarify….

Often it is questions of this kind that enable people to talk about their interests with an interested listener (whom we so often lack in life). The main thing is to make sure that you have an interested intonation when you ask a similar question.

"Socratic" questions

Socrates came up with an original method of persuasion. He did not explain anything to the interlocutor, did not convince him with anything, he simply asked him questions. But the question was worded in such a way that it assumed a predetermined answer - "yes" or "no". Three "yes" answers unconsciously force the client to answer yes to the fourth question. A very well-functioning trick. So stock up on a few questions, the answers to which are obvious:

Do you want to choose the right model?
Would you like to buy a quality product?
Do you want to buy a product at the best price?

The point of using such questions is to connect with the client and get some positive responses from them.

Alternative questions

These questions provide a choice. They suggest a quick solution. You are not imposing anything. You simply offer a choice between possible options, what you need and what you need.

Which color do you prefer - black or white?
It is good to ask these questions at the beginning of the conversation in order to turn the conversation with the buyer in such a way as to move his choice from the situation "Buy - do not buy" to the situation "Buy this or that?". It's not about whether to buy or not, but about WHAT to buy.

So, in the sales process, you need to ask Various types questions. The art of the seller is to ask them at the right time.

Possible statements in determining the needs of the client:

What are your wishes for the future TV?
Who are you buying a home theater for?
Which model do you like best?
What features do you need?
Which design do you like best?
What do you think of this model?

Basic Active Listening Techniques

When we speak, we teach; when we listen, we learn.

People buy what they need, so find out exactly what your customer wants.

But in addition to the ability to ask questions, you must be able to listen to the client. If you are good at asking questions, but not able to listen to the answers, then the price for this is small. Listening to the seller is aimed at understanding the needs of the client and assessing his readiness to make a purchase. The ability to listen with an open mind, openly: listening, letting the other person know that he has been heard is a very important skill.

Reception "Echo".
Verbatim repetition by the seller of the main provisions expressed by the client. The repetition of the client’s statement should be preceded by introductory phrases such as: “As far as I understand you ...”, “Do you think that ...”

Reception "Summary".
Reproduction of the essence of the client's statements in a compressed and generalized form. In this case, you can use such introductory phrases as: “So, you are interested in ...”, “The most important selection criteria are ...”

Reception "Logical consequence".
The seller deduces a logical consequence from the statements of the client. For example, a salesperson says to a customer, "Based on what you've said, you're interested in extended warranties." When repeating the words of the client, it is desirable to show positive emotionality.

Reception "Clarification".
You ask for clarification of certain provisions of the client's statements. For example, a salesperson says to a customer, “This is very interesting, could you clarify…”

nonverbal accompaniment.
Active listening also includes appropriate non-verbal behavior: you look into the eyes of the interlocutor, your posture expresses attention, you nod your head and make sounds of approval.

When listening, the pitfalls of biased, selective, and indifferent listening should be avoided.

Prejudiced listening. You know in advance (or you think you know) what the person wants to say. At the same time, your reaction, even against your will, will be determined by some pre-established (and often negative) attitude to what was said.

Selective listening. You hear only what you want to hear, everything else is kind of filtered out.
Distracted listening. You do not show emotions, you look like a person thinking about something else.

Open questions imply a detailed response. They cannot be answered in monosyllables, “yes” or “no”. As a rule, they begin with questions: What? Who? How? Where? How much? Why? Which?

Open questions are required to:

receive additional information from the client;

create a comfortable situation for maintaining contact;

take the first steps towards identifying needs.

Examples of open questions:

“What is important to you when buying a drill?”

“Tell me, what are your requirements for this material?”

“What is the relevance of business training for your company?”

Benefits of open questions:

encourage the interlocutor to answer without limiting him in anything;

orient a person to reflection, analysis of his actions, stimulates the birth of thoughts that may not have occurred to him before;

give the interlocutor the opportunity to voluntarily convey information, freely talk about their feelings, comment on events;

put the seller in front of the need to carefully listen and observe.

Disadvantages of open questions:

can provoke a long response, so they can not always be applied in a limited time;

able to confuse an interlocutor who is not used to answering general questions;

can cause a confused and chaotic response, difficult to understand;

conceal the need to ask clarifying questions, interrupting the interlocutor, which can offend him and lead to difficulties during the conversation.

It is good practice to ask open-ended questions:

at the beginning of negotiations;

to move from one topic to another;

if it is necessary to make the interlocutor think;

when it is necessary to find out the interests and needs of the client;

if you want to revive and strengthen the energy of the client's awareness of some phenomenon;

if you want to determine the cause of failures and doubts of the client.

All questions you ask the client should be conducive to constructive communication and be businesslike and friendly. A good question asked in a rude way will not only destroy the established contact, but can also lead to the failure of the transaction.

However, open questions give the interlocutor the opportunity to avoid a specific answer, provide only information that is beneficial to him, and even divert the conversation to the side. Therefore, in the course of a business conversation, it is recommended to ask, in addition to open questions, other questions.

Clarifying questions

Clarifying (semi-open) questions require short, concise answers. They should be asked if you are not sure about something or have doubts about whether you understood the client correctly.

Purpose of clarifying questions- restore the omitted information, find out the interlocutor's personal idea of a certain issue, double-check what was said.

These questions are necessary to:

receive specific information;

clarify the needs of the client;

bring the client closer to the purchase (to the completion of the transaction).

Clarifying (semi-open) questions include the words:

"Do I understand correctly that…",

"Why?" - one of the best clarifying questions,

"I.e, ….",

"You want to say…",

"You mean...".

Examples of clarifying (semi-open) questions:

That is, you would prefer to go to Greece. Did I understand you correctly?

Do I understand you correctly that you would like to purchase a gift for your spouse?

Please let me know how much you would like to pay. I ask this question in order to choose the best option for you.

I told you the main advantages of this model (this product, this brand). Tell me which one suits you best?

You paraphrase the client's statement and clarify whether it was understood correctly. The interlocutor will confirm or refute your doubts and may provide additional information.

Feel free to ask clarifying questions if you do not understand something or are in doubt. Believe me, the client will not think badly of you. Rather, you will give the impression of a person striving to thoroughly understand the issue and not to miss important points conversation.

Need is the inner stimulus of a person. We often hear about the phrase - customer needs. There are a lot of books, trainings, where they teach how to correctly identify needs. Great attention is always paid to identifying sales needs - this is like a key to unraveling the client's secret desires. Of course, there is logic in this, but how to do it? In this article, we will look at:

What is a question funnel?
Examples of open questions.
What are alternative questions?
When to use closed questions?
Why identify customer opportunities?
The universal technique of three questions.
Sales technique "Finish the house".

Identification of sales needs, technique of questions

Everyone knows that identifying needs is important and necessary, which helps with questions of various types, to conduct reconnaissance of the desires and expectations of the client. You can ask a hundred questions and find nothing that will help you make a sale, or you can ask 2-3 open-ended questions and close the deal. It will not be correct to talk about the types of questions and the technique of their application in passing - this topic is very important, study it.

You have probably already heard somewhere that there are such types of questions: open, alternative and closed.

Each of the three types of these questions will be discussed below, but for now it is important to understand the principle of the funnel of questions: first, we learn as much as possible, letting the client talk, tell you about the problem, then we specify the options and at the end the offer to buy. Schematically it looks like this:

Your task is to build negotiations with the client in such a way that he says: "Yes", and for this you need to correctly hear and understand the answers to open questions. If you don't have enough information to suggest something specific, keep asking open-ended questions. The problem with many novice sales managers is that they ask questions that are not entirely useful for them, that do not reveal the essence of the client's problem - this art comes with experience, but for now here are a few examples.

Examples of open questions to identify customer needs

If you want to master the technique of identifying customer needs, you first need to master. Open-ended questions are questions to which the client will be forced to give a detailed answer. Such questions should be used at the beginning of a dialogue with the client, as they will help to understand his general needs. Then, when you understand why the client came to you, you should ask a couple of three alternative questions and only at the very end of the consultation - closed questions.

Let's look at a few examples of needs elicitation using open-ended questions:

“What should provide you .... ?
“What do you expect from…. ?
“For what conditions / goals / objectives do you need .... ?
“Describe the operating conditions…. »
“What should be in this model…. ?
“What did you not like about your previous model…. ?
How will you use... ?
What would you like to see in... ?
“Have you had any experience with a similar model…?”
“What caught your attention in this model…?”
“What are you afraid of, what should not be in …. ?

The client will be forced to answer these questions in detail and in detail. In what the client will tell, you should hear not only the answer to your veiled question, but also a lot of indirect facts that can paint a picture of needs more clearly.

The use of open-ended questions does not end the need-elicitation technique. Alternative and situational questions are also great helpers.

Alternative question example

“Do you prefer blue or green…. ?
“You are considering a car with manual or automatic…. ?
“Is speed or quality more important to you…. ?

Alternative questions help refine the details and narrow down product options, gradually moving closer to closing the deal. You can also use them to push the client to a specific option: “Do you care about a practical or beautiful color…. ?

Why identify customer needs and capabilities?

By recognizing in detail the needs of the client - why a person considers your product, what tasks it should perform, you can more accurately offer what the client really needs. But, as they say: “There are customer needs, but there are opportunities”. Surely it often happens to you that the manager has worked out the process of identifying needs with high quality, but the person leaves disappointed.

For example, a person wants to buy a good modern TV for himself, there are more than enough needs - he needs a TV, because the old one burned down, spends a lot of time watching movies, but he doesn’t have money to buy the TV he dreams of, or he simply didn’t know how much worth modern models and was disappointed that he could not afford such a purchase. Sometimes a person does not realize that he cannot afford to meet his needs financially - he does not have the opportunity to do this.

And it is precisely here that your task is not to humiliate him with words: “I see you just don’t have enough money, will we wait for you when you collect the required amount, well, or let’s get a loan?”, but carefully bring to the option that he can actually buy and this is what should satisfy the main sore and aching part of his needs. “Yes, I understand that you wanted a slightly larger diagonal, but the essence is in the quality of the picture, and it is a hundred times better than what you had, right?”.

It turns out that when identifying the needs of the client, we forget about the main thing - to identify opportunities - how much money does this person have for the purchase? If we're talking about real practice sales, then the capabilities and needs of the client are inseparable things.

The main thing is to feel the real possibilities of the client - maximum amount money he is willing to spend now. If you make a mistake, there will be no sale!

There are only two ways to identify opportunities - secretly and openly. With an explicit method, everything is clear - you can ask the client: “how much do you expect?” or "what's your buying budget?" and maybe he will tell you, and maybe he will also tell the truth?

Many still forbid identifying opportunities by an explicit method, arguing that you put a person in an awkward position with a direct question about money, look into your pocket and all that .... This is a completely normal question, but not in the first minute of communication. At the beginning of the article there are links to the study of the technique of formation and application of questions.

And finally, you can secretly identify opportunities by observing the reaction of the client when you offer him an option that you think is suitable for you and listen carefully to him. Here you can recall a lot of techniques, for example, such as the SPIN of the 80s. years or something else, but the meaning is the same - narrowing the number of options through questions. The bottom line is that when you go to a specific option (want to offer a specific product), based on the identified needs of the client, you are faced with the impasse described above “needs-opportunities”, since often the purchase budget has not been clarified.

The Three Question Technique, Universal Questions in Sales

How can we be sure, you ask? Let's remember the saying: "Learn from the mistakes of others". Try a technique that rarely fails. Its meaning lies in three questions, asking which, you will receive all the information that is necessary to proceed to the sale.

“Please tell me what it should be…? My task is to offer you the best for the amount you expect. Let the client tell you everything himself, do not “load” him with questions - situational, problematic, etc. After that, select the appropriate option and make a presentation.
“If you plan to buy soon, can you take advantage of a special offer that is only valid until …..?” The client's response will let you know how to work further. Work with goods in stock, or just make a presentation for the future and exchange contacts.
“This option meets your expectations, can we place an order?” leading to a specific option and waiting for a response from the client. It is very important! Invite people to buy what you present.

Make the client talk, find out why he came? Wherever you work and whatever you sell, use this method, adapt this model to your product and earn more. When you ask these questions, you'll be surprised how talkative customers are.

Identification of customer needs by the method: "Finish the house"

I will open for you a look at the sale through the achievement by the client of the full scope of conditions. Let me explain with an example:

Imagine that the consumer's awareness that "I BUY THIS" consists of many elements - "constructor elements". And the decision “I BUY IT” is “a completed house from a designer”. So "house" will be considered "home" only when all the elements of the constructor are in place.

Let's imagine that a client comes to you and you start building a house, right? In fact, everything is 100% wrong. This is the trap we all fall into when offering our products or services - we are trying to build new house rather than finish what has already been started. What does it mean? This means that without you, a person has decided what he wants to buy, how much he is willing to spend, in what time frame he will do it, and so on. He performed an action - he came to you, and this means that he is driven by a motive - a born need for something. Find out exactly what motive is your task.

You just have to complete the house - put a couple of cubes - offer only what it lacks, it is the word LACKS that is the key to "I BUY IT!".

But you can’t directly ask: “what do you need to buy this”? So - YOU CAN! There are just so many ways to ask this question. Create your own sales question that fits your field of activity and you will see how the results of your meetings with the client have changed. Customer needs are different, they are similar in structure to the problem - it needs to be solved and quickly.

Sample question: “I see you like everything, but something confuses you. What, if not a secret?

Sell what's missing - if the customer lacks confidence in a product, sell confidence by shaping it with facts. If features are missing, sell features by demonstrating them. It turns out that when we dig too deep and ask the client: “Why do you need it? Take it!” or "Are you sure you need it?" or "You don't need it at all!"- with these phrases we knock out brick by brick and break the house - "I BUY THIS."

Conclusion

Work with a person here and now, and do not try to break the already formed early basis, consisting of beliefs, stereotypes and sympathies - this is the most difficult and long way to close the deal. Some sellers have created their own question modules that reveal the client very quickly - just a couple of questions and needs at a glance. This is a consequence of: intellectual work with the buyer, analysis of the behavior and needs of the client and, of course, the presence of internal achievement motivation. Be attentive to what the client says and you will be able to ask the right question for this second, and not a formulaic one from an old notebook.

How do you identify the needs of your customers? Share your secrets in the comments!

Hello! In this article, we will walk you through the process of identifying customer needs.

Today you will learn:

Why is it necessary to determine the needs of customers;
What are the types of needs?
How to identify and analyze customer needs;
What are the mistakes in identifying needs?

Why you need to identify customer needs

The client is the main value of any modern enterprise. The client's problem is the problem of the company, the solution of which is their common goal. The problem solved is the profit of the organization.

It would seem that everything is simple. It is necessary to learn from the buyer about his needs and offer a product that can satisfy them in the best way. However, in practice, sellers face difficulties in identifying these very needs.

Finding out the needs of the client is a task that the company faces several times. The first time the question of determining the needs of the client arises before the development of the product and the formation of the marketing mix.

This is where the rule should work.: do not sell what you have produced, but produce what will definitely be bought from you. Thus, before you start developing a product, you need to determine the needs of the market.

In this case, we first determine the needs in stages. First for the entire target audience. For example, schoolchildren need a pen with putty on the other end.

Then we break target audience into segments and define the need more narrowly, for each segment. For example, elementary school students need ballpoint pens with putty, and high school students need helium pens.

After that, we can produce goods that will definitely be bought from us.

Needs should be taken into account when forming the marketing mix. For example, small children stationery parents buy, and they prefer to see the rational advantages of the product, we use this in advertising the product. But older children themselves go to the store. They want to stand out or be like their idols, this can also be used when promoting a product.

At this stage, the needs are determined by analyzing the market, conducting surveys and research. Then a map of the needs of each target segment is drawn up.

However, the question of studying needs arises again. It represents the second stage of the sales process. Let's see what this is for.

The reasons for the need to identify customer needs in the process of selling goods:

The same product can satisfy different needs, and therefore, it needs to be sold in different ways. For example, someone buys a smartphone to surf the Internet, while someone needs it to make calls and watch video files. Having determined this, the seller will offer the first client a gadget with 4G and good Wi-Fi reception, and the second client will offer a smartphone with a large and bright screen and good sound;
Knowing the needs of the client, you will be able to properly present the product.
One of the stages of the sales process is the response to customer objections. It is possible to give an argument that can convince a consumer to buy a product only by knowing his needs. This will allow you to operate with the value content of the product for a particular consumer.
Knowing the needs allows you to establish a trusting relationship with the buyer: show sympathy, support.

Types of customer needs

There is a huge variety various classifications needs. Remember Maslow's pyramid of needs or Herzberg's two-factor model of needs, but they are ineffective at the stage of product realization.

In sales, it is customary to distinguish two types of needs: rational (they are also called functional) and emotional .

Rational needs - the main needs, without the satisfaction of which the further existence of the individual is impossible. Of course, this is too categorical a definition for modern world, but in fact it is true. for example, you are walking around the city on a hot summer day and are very thirsty. You will definitely stop at the nearest stall and buy a bottle of water, because without it it will be very difficult to continue the journey.

Operating with the rational needs of the client, it is possible to sell consumer goods: food, clothing, furniture. At the same time, the consumer may not be interested in the financial side of the issue.

When working with such products, emphasis should be placed on the functional benefits of the product. For example, a jacket can be presented like this: “This jacket is made of a cold-reflecting material, it will keep you warm on the street, and at the same time you will not be hot in transport in transport.”

emotional needs arise when the rational ones are satisfied. An example emotional needs may be the need for self-expression or belonging to a group, these are social needs. A product that satisfies an emotional need should reflect the values of the consumer, his worldview.

Branded products can play on the emotional needs of the client. For example, the Apple brand is associated by consumers with a certain status and level. This is the satisfaction of an emotional need.

Selling a product that satisfies an emotional need should be based on the feelings and emotions of the client. For example, the same jacket can be sold like this: “This jacket is the new trend of this season. Mr. “N” himself walks in it!” As Mr. "N" one should present the person referent to the given consumer.

There is another classification useful for salespeople. According to it, internal and external needs are distinguished.

Internal needs associated with personal experiences and fears of the client. For example, a girl buys cosmetics to please herself.

External Needs associated with the desire of a person to gain social recognition. For example, the same girl buys cosmetics to please her boyfriend.

At the same time, despite the fact that the girl in both the first and second examples needs the same product category, the purchases will be different. In the first case, the choice will be based on the personal preferences of the girl, and in the second, on the preferences of the guy.

Stages of identifying customer needs

And now the client is already in your store. You walk up to him and say the classic phrase: “ Can I help you?". The visitor gives his classic response: “ I'll take a look and, if anything, I'll contact you". And that's where your interaction ends. This is a typical mistake.

Step 1. We determine the need.

Before approaching a potential buyer, observe him, see which categories of goods he pays more attention to, conduct an initial collection of information. So you will understand what kind of product he came to your store for. For example, we sell dishes, and our client walks around the trading floor and looks at teapots. From this we can conclude that he came for the teapot. Everything is very simple. The “observation” phase of the process of identifying customer needs should not take more than 30 seconds.

Now you can go to the client. Come up with a suggestion: Good afternoon! New teapots were brought to us today, we have not had time to put them in shopping room let me show them to you" or " We have a kettle that boils 2 liters of water in 30 seconds, let me show it to you”.

By the way, the client can respond to the second sentence by expressing his need: “ I need a bigger kettle" or "I don't need an electric kettle". And with this you can already work. Therefore, on this stage try to describe any product in your offer.

Step 2. Demonstrate and ask questions.

If the client agreed to follow you, then we first show him the goods, and then proceed to the questions.

If he expressed his disinterest in your proposal, then immediately go to the questionnaire with questions. By the way, if you are a novice salesperson, then it will really be useful for you to make a small questionnaire with questions. It does not need to be shown to the client, but it will be more convenient for you to remember all types of questions and situations in which they are used.

Questions are of the following types:

open- questions that require a detailed answer. Example: “Which kettle do you need?”;
Closed questions that involve one of two options response. Example: “Do you need an electric kettle?”;
Alternative Questions containing two alternative answers. Example: “Do you need an electric or regular kettle?”;
Rhetorical- serve to maintain a conversation and create a friendly atmosphere. Example: “Is this teapot really beautifully designed?”;
suggestive– questions that push the client to the correct answer (for us). Example: “If you need a large capacity kettle, then it’s better to take a regular one to save electricity, what do you think?”.

The situations in which one or another type of questions is used are presented in the table.

Step 3. Listen!

After you have passed the question stage, you will have to listen to the objections of the client.

At this stage, two rules must be followed: do not interrupt the client and participate in the conversation. This can be done using the active listening technique. It consists in “giving in” to the client, repeating his last phrases or the key meaning of the phrase. By doing this, you show your interest in what your interlocutor says, and therefore in his problem.

This completes the process of identifying needs, it remains only to bring your interaction with the client to its logical conclusion.

Step 4. We answer.

What to do after identifying needs?

After the client speaks out and tells you about all his problems, answer all his objections with reason. Do not argue with him, evaluate the mood of the interlocutor, cite as arguments the real characteristics of the product that are of value to a particular consumer.

That is, in order to convince the consumer of the need to make a purchase of a product, refer to the needs that we have just identified.

Let's go back to the kettle example. Let's say our client needs a large electric kettle that would allow him to save electricity and boil water for no longer than 3 minutes. We show him a suitable option, but the client says that he is not satisfied with the price.

We return to the needs - saving electricity. Now we can confidently tell our client that in a certain amount of time he will “beat off” the price of the kettle on saving electricity and at the same time he will get a quick boil of a large volume of water, which he will not get with any other option.

Common mistakes in identifying needs

The most common mistakes that a manager makes when identifying customer needs are the following:

salesman monologue. Remember that your goal is to identify needs, and you can only identify them by listening to the client. In an ideal dialogue, the seller and the buyer should participate equally.
Wrong customer service tactics. As you can see from the data in the table, for some types of consumers the best option there will be a predominance of open questions, and for some - closed ones. In the event of a mistake, there is a high probability that you will lose a buyer.
Identified one need and stopped. Remember that one need entails the emergence of other, related needs. By identifying them, you can increase sales several times.
Identification of needs and product presentation in one step This is a very common mistake. First you need to determine the need, and only then, using knowledge of the needs of the client, present the product.
We interrupt the client. It is impossible to interrupt the client, even if he is wrong and behaves tactlessly. It is necessary to let the buyer speak out, and only then respond to his objections.
Keep the conversation going on another topic. Your task is to guide the dialogue, do not let the client go far from the topic.

Today, in this article I would like to talk about one training, or rather about one training exercise on. In my opinion, the exercise, if done correctly, can simply open your eyes, unless of course it is required, it allows you to take a different attitude to communicating with a client and conducting a sale. After all, often, inexperienced sellers try to talk about all the advantages of their product without hearing the client at all. And such trainings are needed, such trainings to identify needs allow you to “correct” thinking. But first things first.

First of all, about the very phenomenon of identifying needs. For example, a visitor came to us. For what purpose he came, what needs he has, we do not know. And we can go two ways:

The first is to draw conclusions in advance and try to offer something. This path can be considered as an option. But if we don't know how to read minds, then we can simply not guess. We can talk about the benefits of the product, but the customer does not need these benefits. So it turns out either an objection or a refusal.

The second way is to find out why the visitor came to us. That is, find out the needs.
The second way will be discussed further.

Types of questions to identify needs

Questions help us identify needs. There are three main types of questions:

Open questions

Open-ended questions encourage the client to talk. More on this type of questions below.

Closed questions

Closed questions require a one-word yes or no answer. This type of question is not very informative, but allows you to get a direct answer. It is useful in the case when we have received the basic information and we need a final clarification. The canonical example of such a question is the completion of a transaction:
"Are you satisfied with this decision?" or “Do you like it? Do you take it?"

Alternative questions

Alternative questions imply a choice from the options "either - or". For example, when we received information and we need clarification:
"Black or white version?" or “Do you have two options or one?”.

Types of open questions

Open-ended questions are the most informative, so they should be used more than the other two types of questions.

Questions of priorities

Probably the most important type of open questions. Questions about priorities allow you to understand what is more important for the client in choosing.
For example: “What is most important for you in choosing?”.

Identity Questions

As noted above, we do not know how to read minds. Therefore, if the first question about the priorities of the client, for example, says that reliability is important to him, then this can mean anything.
Therefore, it makes sense to ask what "reliable" means to the client.

Questions about the reasons

Open-ended questions about the reasons allow you to understand why the client decided to make his choice. Once a client came to us, then there was a reason for this. Here is the reason to find out:
For example, "In connection with what did you decide to choose ...?" or “What did you not like about what you had before?”.

Questions about circumstances

That is, these are questions about how often the client plans to use our product, in what quantity, under what conditions. That is, here we find out the circumstances of the use of the product.

Questions as a tool

Questions are not needed to keep the dialogue going. You need to hear the answers.
An example is a story that a friend told me. She went into a clothing store, planning to buy a warm, black sweater. The consultant asked questions about my friend's needs and listened carefully. And then he brought a gray, transparent jacket. Then the friend left without a purchase.
The next exercise allows you to learn how to ask questions and listen to the answers.

Exercise training

The exercise is pretty simple. Two are involved. One prepares a simple drawing. The second must ask ten questions to understand what is shown in the figure. And after the tenth question, the second participant, passing the exercise, must draw the drawing that the first one prepared.
The purpose of the exercise is to develop the skill of asking questions. As the exercise progresses, the value of open-ended questions becomes clear.
It also improves listening skills. After all, asking a question and asking a question and getting an answer are two different things.