How do we connect with clients and customers in a deeper way? Last episode we talked about the importance of interviewing clients instead of convincing them to choose us, but what questions should we ask? Today I’m giving you my 4 magic questions for getting to the heart of your leads’ challenges, goals, and desires. Ask these to tap into their emotional space, build trust, and create strong client relationships that last for years!

Read transcript below:

Steve Napolitan: Welcome to More Business, More Life TV. And today we’re going to talk about how do we connect with our customers and clients in a deeper way. So when you connect with your customers or potential customers as well, a lot of what we’re talking about this week is sales. And so when we’re selling, we want to make sure that, well, one, what I’ve already brought up, that it’s a match, that we’re discovering a match and that we’re only picking the clients that we’re meant to work with, the ones that we can truly serve, that we can help. And in doing this, we have to connect deeper. We have to ask the right questions so that we can be able to know if we should provide this service or not. And so in doing this, we have to ask the right questions. I’m going to give you four today that you’re going to want to write down.

The first one is, what is your goal? You could also say it in this way, what are you most focusing on right now? What is something that you would like to have right now? Things like that, just to understand. But then we don’t stop there. This is what I want. There’s two main questions that I want you to start asking more frequently and that is, what will having that do for you? This is a magical question that gets into the emotions and the depth of truly connecting, and look into their eyes when you ask this question, connect with these other human beings. We have to connect. If we don’t connect with them, then it makes it a challenge, because we’re just trying to sell them something. We’re not really being there with them. I want you to truly be there.

So if you ask, what would you like or what is your goal and then what will having that do for you? You’re going to start to get into the depths and sometimes even the customer client will actually change what they’re asking for. I’ve had people say, “Hey, I want to make $1 million.” And then I say, “What will having that do for you?” And then really what they want is more life and they want more time with their family or different things. And they think that having that money is the answer. And sometimes it is, but a lot of times it’s not. Money’s definitely not the answer, but it is a tool. So having more of it, can it make more options? Yes. But a lot of times we start making money and then we can’t get off the treadmill. We have to keep staying on the treadmill. That’s where we get off. And then you don’t have the time you want in your life.

There’s a skylight up there and it’s coming down on my face, changing the lighting. So the same goes for any product or service. We have to ask that. So the first two questions is, what would you like, or what is your goal and what will having that do for you? Then we need to dig into the pain.

This is a little longer of a question, what is slowing you down, challenging you or stopping you from having that? What is slowing you down, challenging you or stopping you from having that thing that you want or that goal, whatever you want to add on to that sentence, and the reason I put all three of those is because if you say what’s stopping you? They might say nothing or what’s challenging you? I’m not challenged. What’s slowing you down? Oh it’s this or that.

So when you ask what’s slowing you down, challenging you or stopping you? Then what happens is you get the opportunity to find out how bad the pain is for them. If it’s just slowing them down, it might be a little bit. If it’s challenging them, it might be a little bit more. If it’s stopping them, it might be a big thing that’s in the way of them having what they want. So you can check in on this. And then after they answer that, then you want to follow up with how is that affecting you? So this thing that’s happening, how is that affecting you? Sorry for the notifications. That is affecting, I keep telling myself every day that I’m going to turn that sound off so this doesn’t happen and then I keep doing it. I will do it one day.

So, how is this affecting you allows us to get into the emotion. If we don’t get to those deeper levels, then we’re not truly connected with them. And I’ll tell you by doing this, by allowing myself to dig deeper, to find out what’s going on, it’s allowed me to build deep relationships with my clients and customers that lasts for years and years and years. And one of the things we often forget is we spent so much time creating relationships, that we don’t do the proper thing to maintain those relationships and ask the questions to make that. The biggest thing you can do is find new customers, find new leads, find new friends in life. Then the best thing you can do for business is keep them and build up that relationship. And really truly connect with them.

So your wow clients right now, the ones that already are buying from you, you should be going and asking these questions. Find out how you can better and more deeply serve them and not be afraid to get into some of those emotional states. Because when you build that emotional trust, they’re probably going to be a client or customer for possibly life.

So really think about how you can go deeper, how you can truly connect with your clients. There’s a lot I can talk about on this, but these are just four simple questions that you can start to connect. Go try it out. Let me know how it works. Let me know what questions you had. If you liked this, please subscribe and hit the bell so you get notified of our next episode. We’ll talk soon. See you on the next episode.