My question for you today is, how much thought do you put into the questions that you’re asking your prospects in a meeting? You know, the more time you plan preparing, the better your chances are of success, right? You have to have questions asked in a particular way to succeed. Today, I’m going to give you three things you need to think about in every question that you ask a prospect. How you question the prospect in a sales call isn’t art, some people say it is. It isn’t a skill, although some people say it is. It’s both. Today we’re going to talk about three things you can do when asking questions in a sales meeting to make sure that the prospect becomes your client.
The first thing you want to do is you want to make sure that you ask a question that shows you understand the problem that they’re facing. For example, if I’m in a meeting with a prospect and the issue is worker’s compensation, I may say something like, “I understand where you’re coming from, and that your workers’ compensation premiums are higher. Can you tell me a little bit more about how your experience mod got inflated?” I acknowledged the fact that they have a workers’ comp problem, and I ask a follow-up question that shows I understand what more than likely caused that workers’ comp problem.
The second thing you want to do is you want to create doubt through your questioning. You want your prospect to begin to second guess the person who’s representing them now, and make sure that you have the opportunity to win this business. Using the scenario above, I would ask the question, “Can you tell me a little bit more about how your experience mod got inflated?” And after they gave me the answer, my follow up would be, “Well, tell me what happened when your current agent came out and discussed your preliminary mod with you this year.” Now I know that 90% of the agents out there do absolutely nothing at all to talk about preliminary experience mods. I hate to say it guys, but a lot of you don’t even know what it is. So by me bringing that up and creating doubt, I now have a chance to stick the ultimate dagger right through this piece of business’s heart at the end.
The third step is to show the prospect  I have a solution through how I answered questions and ask them. Using our scenario, I would acknowledge the fact that they have an issue with their experience mod through my comments. I would question what happened when the agent came out and talked about the preliminary mod, and then I would show our solution. And it would sound something like this. “So I understand your premiums are going up. Tell me a little bit about how your mod got inflated. I understand. Well, when your agent came out several months before renewal when the preliminary mod published, how did that meeting go? What type of advice did they give you then, to discuss things that might be able to be fixed to remedy the mod?”
So I assume when they did that, they provided you with a report that showed you the top loss drivers by frequency and severity. And they also showed you how much of your mod consists of specific injuries by body part type, injury type, cause of injury, or even by employee. Because when we deliver that report, that’s usually when our clients appreciate the software that we use and the solutions we provide. Now, if you think through what I just did, I acknowledged that I understood they had a problem, I drove some doubt because I gave them a scenario that I know didn’t happen, and then I showed them what a solution would look like if my firm represented them. If you do those three things when you’re meeting with a prospect, regardless of what the problem, is you’re going to kill it in commercial insurance.
If you are still walking into meetings talking about premiums, coverage forms, and carrier options, you are already behind.
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