Digging Deeper

Larry Latimer, a master of sales and marketing, once told a story about the time he interviewed one of the top life insurance sales professionals in the country.
 
Larry asked him, “What do you tell people that makes so many of them buy life insurance from you?”
 
His response was not what Larry was expecting.  He said, “I don’t tell them anything. I just keep asking questions until they tell me they are ready to buy!”
 
The salesperson knew that it was necessary to dig deep into the psyche of the prospect in order to find out exactly what it would take to make that person feel good about making a purchase.
 
He had to locate and identify the prospect’s emotional buy buttons.  He had to make sure the prospect felt very positive about the benefits of the policy he was recommending would bring to his/her life.  And he knew that the deeper he dug, the more apt he was to find the answers.  He was a master at asking the right questions that would ultimately lead the prospect to feel good about signing on the dotted line.
 
For many people in sales, Digging Deeper is challenging.  Most salespeople today know that asking questions is important.  As a rule many tend to ask high level questions, questions that can surface interest, certainly, although these questions often don’t surface the real motivators that cause someone to act. RAINMAKERS, on the other hand, dig DEEP.  They don’t stop when they get interest.  They hunt for the real factors contributing to a situation.  They dig to find out the WHY.  They dig to identify the impact – positive or negative – of a customer’s situation.  They surface the implications of moving forward or of not moving forward, whether that be a positive or negative outcome.  They then dig deeper to quantify the value of a decision. They know that by digging deeper to get to the root cause of a problem, or the driving impact of an opportunity, they help the customer SEE the possibilities or the benefits.  As a result, they buy because they want to buy.  Digging Deeper helps the customer buy.
 
The ability to dig deep is the mark of a true Rainmaker – Are you digging deeper?
 
“Rainmakers ‘onionize.’ They remind themselves to keep probing, to keep asking questions, especially why, why, why, and why. They ask, probe, dig, diagnose, and listen. Customers are more impressed by intelligent, legitimate, get-to-the-problem questions than they are by a phony inquiry.”
– Jeffrey J. Fox