Although you don’t appear in a courtroom
to make presentations, trial lawyers can teach you how to use questions to make points. With the following techniques, you can step into an attorney’s shoes to prepare for your next call, then rest your case and win the sale.
Prepare relentlessly. Good lawyers know that asking questions involves risk. Your questioning plan should look like a computer programmer’s flow chart or a decision tree, with several possible answers to your questions presented along with your thoughtfully prepared answer to each. Lawyers and salespeople who make their jobs look easy are often simply the best prepared.
Pause dramatically. After lawyers persuade an opposition witness to reveal information that helps their case, they give the admission greater impact by pausing for a moment afterward so the jury can absorb what the witness just said. After you make an important point or your buyer says something to reinforce one of your arguments, pause for a moment. That moment of silence may be all your buyers need to change their minds.
Quit while you’re ahead. Just as lawyers might end a questioning session right after making a strong impression on the jury, salespeople who have just listened to prospects describe a painful problem or situation should move quickly to the presentation or close. Prospects’ pain helps encourage them to buy, so it pays to try closing while the prospect still feels the need to relieve that pain.
Ask a closed question. When you want buyers to open up, open-ended questions are the way to go. Yes-or-no questions, however, may be best when you and your buyer hold opposing views or when you simply don’t want a lengthy answer. Such questions as “You’re paying $10 per unit now, right?” help you get to your point more quickly.
Create artificial situations. With metaphors, analogies and stories you can paint a picture that evokes the emotion you want your buyer to feel: "Ann, you mentioned earlier how the chairs you use now are difficult to push around, like dragging a king-size mattress up a flight of stairs. Moving these new ones around is more like rolling on a sheet of ice, but with total control."
Ask a hypothetical question. Attorneys often ask witnesses contrived questions to get their opinions on issues that are supposedly based on facts. With prospects, you can ask hypothetical questions to get them mentally to put themselves in a horrible situation that buying your product might solve, or a pleasant situation that may be the result of buying it.