Questions to Uncover Your Customer’s Needs

Connections are built on conversation. Knowing the right questions to connect a customer’s need to your solution is the key to unlocking any sales strategy. While the sales questions available to businesses vary, they overlap in many instances.

Still, the nuances in each question should never be neglected. The most effective way to uncover a customer’s needs is to be attentive and pick your moments.

Why customer research is important

Without knowing what a customer needs, it’s impossible to provide a solution. Market analysis can provide valuable insight, but the best information always comes directly from the customer.

That said, uncovering customer needs is a skill that needs practice and attention. When done right, it can inform strategies, establish trust, lend context to situations and show a willingness to help someone solve a problem.

Asking the right questions

Not all information is helpful – the same is true for questions. Lead research isn’t about sitting down with a list of things to ask. Customer insights can be gained in meetings, informal conversations, email threads, and many other ways.

The key to effective sales questions is asking them in an environment where a customer can give the best response. This means ensuring that they are relaxed but also engaged. When that tone is established, it’s easier to pick the most valuable questions.

Customers should never feel overwhelmed or interrogated by questions. In fact, they should feel like active contributors to the discussion. That’s where the best contact research comes from. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the best customer research questions to ask and what benefits they provide.

10 questions to uncover your customer’s needs

It always helps to gauge how well a marketing campaign is performing. Suppose this is the primary way a business generates leads. In that case, questions can be a great way to understand the campaign from the customer’s perspective.

  1. How did you find out about us?

This question is about establishing which communication channels are the most productive in terms of lead generation. Take stock of the channels your business relies on most. Email, social media, and paid ads are the primary marketing channels in cyberspace. Word of mouth can be just as valuable in the proper context.

  1. What interested you in our product?

Lead research is about understanding a customer’s pain points. What are their needs, and why would they look to your business to solve them? This question can provide solid insight as early as the product development phase.

  1. Would you recommend us to others?

It always helps to know if a customer’s experience is good enough to inspire them to share it. Creating a fulfilling customer experience increases the likelihood of receiving recommendations – one of the most powerful forms of lead nurturing.

Setting expectations

The easiest way to disappoint someone is to set the wrong expectations about your product or service. To avoid this, salespeople should always get to the heart of what a customer wants as soon as possible. From there, the conversation should be driven by realistic standards of what can be done.

  1. What problem do you need us to solve?

Rather than focusing on the solutions on offer, this question asks the customer to first present the problem. It’s framed in a way that encourages them to offer their expectations for the business they’re partnering with or the product they want to buy.

  1. What are you looking to get out of this opportunity?

Expectations exist in two phases: execution and outcome. While the previous question focused on how a customer expects a solution to work, this one emphasizes the end result. If both the business and the customer are working towards the same outcome, then the chances of providing a worthwhile experience increase dramatically.

  1. What do you value most about this opportunity?

Great insights can be gained from more abstract questions. A customer’s values dictate the type of experience they want. Their values also indicate the tone and engagement they’re likely to be responsive to.

Whether a customer wants more professionalism or friendliness, a clear direction, or a willingness to adapt, this question uncovers the approach they’re looking for.

Establishing background

A customer is a person with their own life, history, and worldview. Researching these factors can help a business align its product and support system to individual needs. Not only that but showing an interest in people encourages them to be interested in return.

By getting a customer to invest in the questions being asked, cold leads can turn into warm ones in a single conversation.

  1. What are your most prominent challenges?

Contrary to what companies think, customers don’t spend the bulk of their time thinking about their services. Customers are most invested in their problems, which is what leads to them seeking a solution. This question asks them to present the obstacles they need help with; it also shows a willingness to understand their situation – not just to seal a sale.

  1. How have you dealt with them in the past?

This is an excellent question for customers who’ve sought out solutions in the past. Knowing what didn’t work in the past is as important as knowing what will in the future. It’s also a great way to learn which approaches to avoid and which ones to improve on.

Creating direction

This is the most critical step before a sale. Both the business and the customer should be in complete agreement about the strategy used to meet their needs.

  1. What strategies are you looking to develop with us?

Rather than open with the available services, let the customer point out which options are most attractive to their situation. Even if they don’t have the industry experience to always pick the best service, they understand their problem more intimately than anyone else. Their answer here won’t necessarily be the solution – but it will point in the right direction.

  1. How can we help?

Customers should feel like you are there to help them, not to make a sale. Encourage them to be a part of the solution with this question. From here, it’s all about delivering.

Gathering customer insights doesn’t need to be a complicated process. A lead can often reveal the exact insight a business needs to deliver a solution when they’re involved in the process. This is where sales questions can make the difference.

 

 

Questions to uncover your customer’s needs – Any great marketing or lead nurturing campaign starts with solid research and the freshest highly targeted lists. Impact Enterprise’s highly skilled data specialists can get the data, cost effectively and efficiently. Test pilots are always FREE. Services include, lead validation, data enrichment, contact research, data entry & CRM hygiene; content services include content management, influencer mapping and moderation for social media; AI Data Annotation services include image labelling, language processing and geospatial analysis. 

Impact Enterprises was Established in 2013 and recruits skilled talent from bright young professionals in Zambia, Africa, where 59% of graduates find themselves unemployed and without an opportunity to showcase their skills and dedication. For recurring projects, the company provides a dedicated team to oversee operations for each client and guarantees an exceptional standard of delivery.