5 Questions That Can Identify a Customer's Pain Points

As you're performing sales qualification with a prospect, here are 5 questions to help you discover some of the pains that can create a great conversation with your prospects:

1. What's the biggest hindrance to your customers' growth?

This is a classic. It cuts right to the chase and goes right to the heart of the matter. Every customer is in the customer of growth and the biggest obstacle to it is a serious pain.

Here are some great ways you can get to the meat of the conversation quickly:

1. What's your plan to tackle this?
2. When is your deadline to solve this problem?
3. Do you think it'll be easy or hard to solve this problem?
4. Who is your customer is working to fix this right now?

These questions although simple in its outlook has many layers of complexity to it and will blow any conversation with the prospect wide open.

2. What is your biggest problem?

This is a more fun question. This is a casual question and has its own personality, is funny and creates unusual chaos. It acts to stir up emotion and gets to your prospect's core needs.

3. What does your boss obsess about?

When doing sales you don't always speak to the top and sometimes you will have to manage with someone who is 2 or 3 levels below them.

1. They usually control the budget for B2B
2. A manager usually filters down to her direct reports
3. This signals inexperience. 

4. What takes up the most time in your day?

This focuses on your direct point of contact and you can help them to focus more about the value than the features.

5. What's been repeatedly discussed at company meetings by senior management?

1. This focuses on what keeps the CEO up at night. It has to be addressed for the company for them to continue operating at full capacity. Some examples include:
2. What do senior managers put on their quarterly planning agendas?
3. What do they talk about all the time?
4. What do they send all-company emails about?

These are the customer pains you are looking for and could be life changing for your sales objectives and target.

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