Before we begin this article, take a moment, a little breath, and imagine the ideal customer for your business. It’s a beautiful image, isn’t it? The kind of sight that lingers in your mind’s eye after 14 days of Buddhist meditation.
This smiling, picture perfect customer is ready (and incredibly willing) to part with their cash at a moment’s notice. They chat about the weather while passing you their account number and sort code, allowing you to empty their bank account and watch your company sky rocket into the glistening stratosphere of success.
POP, FZZZZZZZLLLLLLL.
It’s an exciting time to be a marketer. Technologies are rolling out faster and faster, we have access to amounts of data previous generations couldn’t have possibly predicted, and we can communicate in some breathtaking ways with our customers.
One of the things that I thought a lot about last year was when did I take a stand to say that “Sales and Marketing not only should work together better but they must for the survival of the business.”
Questions are the key to sales. From the first insightful question that makes a prospect think, "This person might have something to offer me," to the ones that get a prospect to realize, "We need what this company has," to when you finally hit pay dirt and prospects say, "Yes! We are ready to solve this problem once and for all," questions are what drive a sales process forward.