P3 Sales Questions™ #1

What are P3 Sales Questions™? They are purposeful, powerful, practical questions you can use throughout the sales process to build rapport, dig deeper, and illicit a desired response from the prospect. This first of these I want to highlight is for prospecting.

P3 Sales Question™ #1: “Is Chris still here?”

When you walk into a business and you know the owner’s name (Chris in this example), like most of us, you probably ask the desk-person, “Is Chris here?”. Instead, add the word “still”. That does not seem to change it very much, but you are looking at it from your perspective. Imagine the person on the other side of the desk when you ask, “Is Chris still here?”

He or she thinks: “Hmmm. Did this guy just get off the phone with Chris?” OR “He must know that Chris is leaving early today.” OR “I just got on duty… this guy must have just been meeting with Chris and forgot something.” OR “He must not have heard that Chris no longer works here.” The key is that he or she thinks whatever is appropriate given his or her context, of which you are not aware. Any of those assumptions is better than assuming that you are cold-calling Chris.

What if you don’t know the owner’s name? Well, try to find out before you go. But if you cannot, ask the same question with a gender-neutral name like “Chris”. Chances are that there will not be anyone there by that name. That’s OK. When they tell you that, you can respond with this, “Oh, I’m so embarrassed. Evidently I didn’t have the owner’s name correct in my notes. Would you please help me out so I don’t embarrass myself again when I meet with the owner?”

This all works for phone prospecting too. Just change it to, “Is Chris still there?”