6 Questions That Will Identify Any Customer's Pain Points

There are many ways to qualify a prospect, however, there are some questions that perform better compared to others. If you want your sales team to be performing at the best of the capacities, 

here are the 8 questions that will help you to unearth some of the business pains which can generate better conversion rates.

1. What's your biggest inhibitor to company (or division) growth?

This cuts straight to the heart of the matter. Every company is in the business of growth so the biggest obstacle to growth is generally a serious pain. Many prospects don't really think about this and your question helps you build credibility and helps you to help your prospects to put this into the frame. Helping prospects talk through their current business situation can increase your understanding of the company while demonstrating your expertise.

• What's your plan to tackle X Pain
• When is your deadline to solve this problem?
• Do you think it'll be easy or hard to solve it?
• Who in your company is working to fixing this right now?

2. What is your biggest hairball?

This is a whimsical question. We like using this because it has personality, and is fun. More importantly, it'll stir up your prospect's emotion and get straight into their core needs.

This helps you make it more personal because you are asking your prospect how this pain actually affects them

3. What doe your boss obsess about?

You won't always be talking directly with the decision-maker more often than not you'll be speaking to someone 2 or 3 levels directly under them

• They usually control the budget for buying decisions.
• A manager's pain usually filters down to her direct reports
• It signals inexperience

4. What takes up the most time in your day

This is another angle to approach business pain that focuses on your point of contact. Salespeople hear over and over again that buyers care more about value than features, and this question reveals the concrete value of your product that could be useful and helpful to your prospects on a personal level.

5. What's been repeatedly discussed at standup or all-company meetings by senior management?

As mentioned above, business pain isn't two employees complaining there isn't enough coffee in the break room, and it's not something that can be fixed easily. This is the pain that keeps business owners up at night.

6. Why are you not closing deals?

Asking this question might uncover positioning pains, process pains or productivity pains in one of a company's most important departments: the sales department. If you can position your product or service as something that enables sales or marketing teams to acquire more business, you can win over those bottom-line-focused decision-makers.

Conclusion

These questions can give you really good insight into how your prospect's business' operates and what challenges they may be facing, and what kinks in the chain may be prohibiting the growth which they desire. Information about any one of these can open up opportunities for you to close more deals and deliver a chance for you to show how and what solutions your expertise can help to solve.

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