Hear: The second step in the SHARE process
By: Buck McMurray
One of the best things you can do after you’ve started a conversation is listen to your potential customer—listen to her needs, listen to her concerns, listen to what makes her happy. That is the foundation of the second principle in the SHARE method: Hear.
Let me start with an example. Imagine you’ve engaged someone in a conversation. You perceive this person is receptive to your message about Tahitian Noni Bioactives. What do you do
now? When you get to this point there are usually two options: You can jump right into a bioactive presentation, or continue to listen to their concerns.
By jumping right into a bioactive presentation, you’ll be forcing your customer to listen to a sales pitch that they probably don’t want to hear (at least, not yet). However, if you let HER do the talking and listen to HER concerns and desires, when you do recommend a bioactive product, you’ll know exactly what products to recommend and exactly how to recommend them.
That begs the question, “How do you get a customer to tell you about her needs?” The best way to understand a customer’s concerns is asking questions. If you’re the only one doing the talking, you’ll never understand what makes your customer tick, what makes her worry, what makes her uncomfortable. You have to ask questions.
Let’s talk about “questions” a bit more.
There are three types of questions you can ask. The first is situational. These are questions that help you better understand your customer’s situation. These are questions that can be answered usually in one or two words, questions like, “How many kids do you have?”, “How long have you lived here?”, “How long have you been married?”, or “When did you graduate college?” These types of questions can be both good and bad: They’ll help you understand the situation a bit more, but if you ask too many of these, you’ll bore your customer to death. Normally, you can find the answer to these questions with a little pre-work investigating. So ask situational questions, but try to keep them to a minimum.
The second the problem question. Problem questions help us understand where the customer is experiencing discomfort or pain. Problem questions include queries like, “How’s your health?”, “How’s your family?”, “How’s your job?”, or “How’s your skin?” Problem questions get the customer talking about those things that cause them concern. These questions not only help you understand which bioactive products would best help the customer, but they help the customer recognize and verbalize their own problems. They help bring their concerns and discomfort to the surface.
Once you understand the situation and you have a good grasp of the problems your customer is experiencing, you’ll be tempted to jump in with a product presentation. RESIST THE URGE! The last question is the most important. It’s what we call the implication question. Implication questions help the customer see what sort of impact the problem has had on their life. Such questions help customers realize how it’s affected their wallet, their relationships, and their overall happiness. Let me give you some examples of implication questions. If someone mentions they’re worried about dark circles under their eyes, you might ask, “What are you doing to fix them?” If they tell you about products they’re using, “You might ask, how much does that cost you every month?” If a customer tells you she’s worried about her weight, you could ask how it’s affecting her relationship with her husband. The goal is to help the customer understand what their problems are actually doing to their lives. You’re helping them recognize really what a pain their problems are. If you don’t ask implication questions, your product presentations won’t have as much punch. Make sure they have punch. Ask implication questions.
If you can help a customer get to this point, you’ve done some great things. First, you’ve helped your customer feel your concern for them. Second, you’ve determined your customer’s needs. Third, you’ve helped your customer bring their problems to the surface. And, fourth, you’ve helped your customer get to a place where they’ll be more open to trying new products, especially if they work like bioactives.
Now, we’ve reviewed START and HEAR. You should have a better understanding of how to start conversations and how to ask questions to hear your customers’ needs. In our next blog post, we’ll talk more about ANSWERing your customers’ needs and how to talk effectively about bioactive products. Stay tuned.
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