Your sales manager probably told you to ask these question of every customer, but every time you do, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. The dumb questions are:
- Do you have the budget for this?
- Who is the decision-maker?
Don’t get me wrong. You need to know the ANSWERS to these questions, but coming right out and asking them is about as effective as some guy walking up to a random woman in a bar and asking her to have sex with him. Here’s why the QUESTIONS are dumb:
DUMB QUESTION: “Do you have a budget for this?” You may find out whether the money is there, but you haven’t found out what’s really important, which is who determined the budget allocation in the first place. Think about it. Most budgets are tight. If there’s money for what you’re selling, somebody had to make a decision about how much was the right amount of money to allocate. Unless you’ve gotten into the opportunity early, the size of the budget was probably suggested by one of your competitors, in which case they have the inside track. And that means you’re probably not going to get the business, and certainly not if you go forward unaware that there is a competitor in the favored position.
DUMB QUESTION: “Are you the decision maker?” If the competitor is already in the account, they’ve probably already wired up both the requirements and the budget. If so, the person who allocated the budget (at the advice of the competitor) will usually tell a lower-level person within the organization to invite the other sellers in, either to satisfy the requirement for multiple bids or to develop a potential leverage point against the competitor that’s already got the inside track. In fact, the real decision-maker may have explicitly told the lower-level person to pretend to be the decision-maker, in order to keep from being bothered by second tier sales reps (and that’s you, bucko). Add to that, middle managers are often reluctant to reveal their lack of decision-making power, even to themselves. So you’re probably going to get a “YES” whether it’s true or not, and you’re no better off than before.
SMART ALTERNATIVE: “Whose numbers did you use to determine the budget?” This question, if answered honestly, tells you all you need to know. Not only will it smoke out the competitor, but you’ll find out who controls the budget, who is (by definition) the real decision-maker. Even better, talking about the budget process doesn’t threaten the middle-manager’s ego nearly as much as a question that infers that he or she is just a lackey for the bigwig.
I wish I had thought of the above all by myself, but it’s adapted from a newsletter article written by John Holland, the co-author of the best selling book, CustomerCentric Selling. The newsletter was published by the folks at Landslide, a company that makes a product that largely replaces CRM. Check it out.
