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I'm going to share with you today six questions that you need to ask every prospect, and you need to ask them early on. Waiting to ask is only going to get you in trouble. It's going to waste your time, and it's going to waste the prospects time. That's the topic. Show begins right now. You're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is to help you as a salesman, sell with confidence and integrity. And now, here's your next. Okay, I'm going to share with you the six questions that you need to ask your prospects. Hey, these are not questions that you make assumptions about. These are not questions that I think I know how the customer does this. No, you need to ask them. Here's why. Too many times what happens is we make an assumption, oh, they fit your icp, the prospect fits your icp, so therefore, they must be a prospect. Wrong again, Cowboy cowgirls, not the case. You have got to ask them, because otherwise what happens is you wind up getting too far down the path before you begin asking them these questions, and you either wind up cutting off. Okay, which is fine, because again. Oh, wait a minute. Hold it. You wasted their time. You wasted your time. Or you try to keep moving the sale forward to actually close. And the only way that you close is you give away the farm. Absolutely fatal mistake. Six questions that you need to ask because just because they're part of your icp, that does not mean that there's somebody who you should be spending time with right now. Because here's what I find. It is too easy to wind up with prospects who have interest. I've got to get to prospects who have intent, and that's what makes them qualified. Question number one that you ask. What problem are you trying to solve? You've got to ask the customer, hey, why? What's the problem? What's the challenge you're facing? And your whole objective through the sales process is to get them to expand on that so you understand the full magnitude of it, because that's what you're going to build your value proposition around. But you. You got to find out right at the beginning what's the problem? Because here's what I've also said. If the problem they have is not significant enough, then they're not going to try to solve it. You see, again, this is interest versus intent. This is why the critical question is, what problem are you trying to solve? Second question. Why now? What makes this so important? Now this is really critical, and I don't care if it's B2B or B2C. Now, you know, the majority of my work, majority of clients, I work with her in the B2B space. And this is critical because here's the whole thing. The purchase that you're looking for the customer to make, in other words, you're looking for them to invest with you. Great. Is undoubtedly going to probably facilitate something else downstream. And you got to understand what's the magnitude of that. You see, by asking, why now I can begin to understand how important it is because again, you know, what problem are you trying to solve? That was question number one. Question number two is, why now? Because now I begin to understand the urgency. Because when the customer says, well, we need this in order to upgrade this, we need this to do this. We need do this to be able to fulfill these orders. Now I'm beginning to understand the urgency. Because remember, you have to have a need, and there has to be an urgency, an importance for the customer to buy, for them to buy. And again, this is the difference between interest and intent. Question number three. What happens if nothing changes? Whoa, now, here's the deal. I see too many salespeople blowing past this question because they just assume if. If the customer has expressed to them what the interest is and the customer has expressed to them that they need to make the decision, now they're going to make the decision. But remember, the number one competitor we face is the customer making no decision. That. That's right. That's our number one competitor. So I got to understand, what are the ramifications if nothing changes? Because they may have an existing supplier, they may have an existing workaround solution, they may be in the process of doing some other things to be able to find an alternative approach to solving the problem. This is why I got to ask the question, what happens if nothing changes? Because I got to understand, have they looked at other options? Is there a workaround? Is there a current supplier? I've got to understand all those pieces. And again, don't make assumptions. I see this with salespeople. What they do is they, well, I know they're currently buying from this company. Hey, you don't know what the relationship is that they have with this company, this competitor of yours. You see, I've got to understand because what happens if nothing changes? There. There may be a real problem happening between the customer you're trying to sell to and the vendor that's currently supplying them. And you got to understand that. And this is why you're doing. Now, the reason these questions are also so Important is because it demonstrates your interest in the customer. It demonstrates that you are absolutely wired in on them and you want to make sure that you're using their time wisely and you're using your time wisely. Which takes me to question number four. Who else is involved? Absolutely critical. Whenever you're talking with a customer, it is always amazing at how they elevate their status. They elevate their importance. It almost always happens. This is especially true if you're dealing with procurement. They're going to say nobody. But see, what I want to understand is who else is involved. And I've got a question coming up. Number six. Stick around for number six, because it's the one that's going to really drive home on this. Because I want to understand who else is involved. Because it's absolutely imperative that I begin creating relationships with these people or these departments sooner than later. Because if I wait till I'm too far down the road, what happens is I wind up presenting my value proposition to the person I've been dealing with. And that person then says, oh, I got to go take it to so and so, so and so. You see who else is involved? What I'm looking for, what I'm looking for is who's the economic buyer, who is the person that's going to pull the trigger and actually finance, who's got control of the budget. And then what I'm looking for and who else is involved is I'm looking for who are the people who are going to prove, in other words, the people that. That validate performance, that validate specs, that, that. That really ultimately have to sign off on it to make sure that it fits everything in the organization. And then there's undoubtedly the user, the person who's going to benefit from it. That, chances are, is who you're talking to. But see, if you don't know who those other two people are, then you're in trouble. Question number five. I love question number five. What does success look like? Now, this is not a softball question. This is a hardball question. Because I'm asking this and I want to get an answer from two perspectives. One, what does success look like for the person who I'm speaking to? Great. I want to understand how valid, how critical, how important this is to their future. But I also want to know what does success look like for the company? Because if I can begin to understand what success looks like for the company, I have a great ability. I have a great ability to begin to understand who and what. Question number six. How have you solved problems like this in the past? I love this question. And what I'm doing here is I'm trying to figure out and I'm trying to understand what is the. The whole background, the process that they go through. Do they go through validation of technical. Do they go through a testing process? Do they go through where procurement has to do credit checks and all this sort of stuff? I want. I want to go through all of those insights, all of that information. And this is incredibly important because now when I do this, I begin to understand. Okay, here it is. Now, reason I asked this question last, 6, is for a very simple reason. By the time I get to question number six, and you don't have to do them in a perfect order like what I've done here, but the reason I like number six is because chances are by this time, the customer is going to have a level of trust with you, they're going to have a level of confidence with you, and they're going to share with you real information. Now, do I need to ask all six of these questions on the initial call? No. No. Chances are you're not going to be able to. The first call that you make, the first conversation you have is. Is. Is probably just to earn the right to be able to have a second call. Right. That. That's probably all it is. You know, you're probably going to be able to ask that first question, maybe the first one and two questions in there. Okay. In terms of the first call, but many times it's only the first one. That's it. And here's what I found. If I can ask these questions on the first call, and we'll say I'm in a long sales process, what I want to do is I want to come back and ask these questions again. And as I begin talking with other people in the organization, I'm going to ask these same questions, and I may get different answers. Now, at this point, I'm probably moving more into the sales process. But here's why I like these six questions, because it validates. You see, in my book, the. The lead has to earn the right to become a prospect, and the prospect has to earn the right to become a qualified prospect. And it's only at the point that they are a qualified prospect that I will begin to sell them. But remember, even when I sell them, I'm still looking at question number three. What happens if nothing changes? Because depending on the length of time it goes through, the process goes through, they may come up with different solutions. They may Come up with different ideas. Question number four. Who else is involved? I've got to. I've got to continuously bring that question up, not only in the prospecting phase, but through the selling phase. Why? Because new people may come and others may go. Okay, what I've done here is I've shared with you six questions. Now, again, they fit your icp. You're not spending time with anybody who doesn't fit your icp. But just because they fit your ICP does not necessarily mean that they have intent. They may just have interest. These six questions are designed to do one thing, to help you validate their intent. I talk about these questions and a whole lot more in my book, Integrity. First selling. I want you to pick up a copy. I want you to dig into it. I had a conversation yesterday with a person who got into it, and already they were only two chapters into it and called me and said, wow, it's changing how I run sales meetings. Yes, it's that strong of a book. My name's Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. Two episodes a week, one like this, where we unpack a single topic. Second episode is where we do a deep dive with a subject matter expert. The show is here to help you see and achieve what you didn't think was possible. Hey, would you do me a favor? Leave me a review on your favorite podcast app, would you? Because I'll tell you what, reviews on podcast apps are absolutely critical for driving the algorithms to get this show out to more people. Hey, I'm Mark Hunter, the sales center. Reach out if you have any questions, because if this triggered something with you, call me. Let's talk. Every day. I'm talking to companies every day. I'm talking to salespeople, and I'm constantly on the road speaking at sales meetings, to sales teams. Great selling.