By N.D. Brown
Trying to open a hoped for dialogue with a question, especially in advertising, has always driven me nuts. If you see an ad with a question headline “Do you suffer from ….?” or “Do you care about …?”, it is too easy to immediately answer “NO!” and move on. But surely there are ways to ask unexpected questions that intrigue and draw in a customer. An ad is a passive environment so it is easy to say “No”. Prospects flying through your interactive website (it is isn’t it?) or trying to slip past a cold call are different.
One of the benefits of being in the small business world is that it should be easier to engage because there are fewer layers for a prospect to peel away. Make sure you go through your phone tree to discover for yourself what a prospect has to go through to be engaged. Often, it can be a painful process but answering questions can be the key to a successful conversation.
Recently, best selling marketing author Seth Godin sent out a blog discussing how easily opening questions can incite conversations with the most reluctant potential customers. Like free-thinking author Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin’s mind runs against the wind, tacking toward the obvious angles most overlook. If you have not read either Godin’s or Gladwell’s books I highly recommend them and I suggest you sign up for Godin’s daily blog as well. You will get a very short comment that will make you think and even amuse you. Try it. It can’t hurt. The neat thing about the internet is unsubscribing really isn’t that hard.
Mr. Godin explained that a very successful Girl Scout avoided the traditional sales opening which had been suggested by the national organization. The suggestions from headquarters were: Tell them who you are and tell them all the good things the Girl Scouts do in the neighborhood. Wait a minute! You have just been stopped on the street, are on the way in or out of the grocery store, or you have been pulled from the TV and opened your front door to a stranger. Hearing about the good deeds and value of the Girl Scouts is not what you wanted to be interrupted with.
Now that you have the picture of the young girl in uniform stepping into your thought train, imagine your reaction to:
“Hello, I’m Becky and I want to know what your favorite cookie is?”
You were all set to say “Thanks but no thanks” or some other brush off. But wait a minute, my favorite cookie? Hmmm, let me think. That stream of consciousness you were so engrossed in has now been pleasantly broken. The package in front of you is a young girl in a clean uniform depicting a known brand and she is asking about something we all like…cookies.
Instead of trying to move her out of your important life, she has now shifted your brain to cookies. Admit it. Right now the portion of your brain that pops up images is scrolling through the cookies you like. Synapses are firing all over your brain pulling up images of cookies as you recall the fresh baked smell and first bite taste. Simultaneously, you have a young girl with pleading eyes waiting for the answer. How can you not answer the question? And BANG you are in a conversation and her chances of making a sale have just skyrocketed.
So the trick to opening a dialogue is not asking a yes-no question but asking a question that has to be answered. The young girl was smart enough to know you probably didn’t care that much about the Girl Scouts and all the good they did for the local community. You cared about what was important to you, your favorite cookies.
You are running a small business and you could not be more proud of what you do and how you do it. You can’t wait to tell prospects and remind customers how great it is, how less expensive it is than the big guys, how much more quality it has then they do, how dedicated to customer service you are, and on and on.
Make sure you and your sales people learn to open by asking what the prospects favorite cookie is long before you say all of those other things.
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N.D. (Don) Brown is a Principal of Brownchild Ltd., Inc. located at 3754 Sunset Blvd., Houston, TX 77005. You can reach him by phone at 713-807-9000-O or 713-822-8370-C. Email him at [email protected] or visit his website at www.brownchild.com.
