What separates good pre-need sales representatives from great ones? One of the most important skills is the ability to truly listen, interpret, and comprehend what is being communicated by your prospect, by asking inquisitive, open ended questions. Skillful questions lead to abundant interaction. The appropriate questions allow others to learn while helping you to build long-term relationships because you are listening more and talking less. The more you can get and keep your prospect talking and you listening, the better for everyone.
The key to getting people to really open up and start chatting with you about their unique wants, needs, fears, and desires is to ask “probing questions”. The right types of probing questions require your prospect to further elaborate on their answer. Responding with a simple “Yes” or “No” just won’t do. An answer that necessitates they provide further explanation can demonstrate your listening skills and begin building the type of relationship that will lead to a sale.
When getting anyone to freely open up to you, it’s helpful to employ different questioning techniques. Here are two of the most common you should try.
Emotional questions. Helping your prospects to think about and/or remember how they felt about the loss of someone close to them will rekindle memories of that time and the reason they need to plan ahead. After all, isn’t the “heart of pre-planning” about sparing loved ones from unnecessary grief, worry, and concern? Saying it and feeling it are two distinctly different things. You don’t need to sell them on why they should pre-plan with you if they can feel the value and benefit for themselves from their own life experience. If you ask these types of questions, and are authentically concerned with the answers, you will forge a connection that will not easily be forgotten.
Funnel questions. The funnel technique involves starting with a general question and then asking for more and more detailed responses. It’s often used by detectives when taking witness statements and is a strategy for getting more deeply involved in a conversation by finding out as much as you can. Funnel questions are good for finding out more detail about a specific point and gaining the attention and confidence of the person with whom you’re speaking. Asking “tell me more” kinds of follow-up questions will focus your prospect on a particular area, so you can glean more information and it makes them feel like you are genuinely interested.
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