Questions to ask a prospect to close a sale

Introduction

As a salesperson, improving your sales is probably at the heart of your objectives. The quality of your relationship with the prospect plays a crucial role in that success. People often say that you buy the person before the product, and after several years in sales, I can tell you it is true. Someone will always buy a service, even a more expensive one, if the salesperson has clearly shown that they understand their challenges and needs. But how do you build this essential approach? It all comes down to the right questions to ask a prospect, at the right time.

These questions are powerful levers that help you:

Build a relationship of trust.
Understand your contact’s challenges, goals and needs.
Qualify the potential customer’s interest and assess their readiness to buy.
Align the benefits of your proposal with their expectations.
Plan the next actions to close the sale successfully.

So, which questions should you ask to uncover your target’s motivations? How do you phrase them so they are both engaging and effective?

This guide gives you the keys to asking the right questions at the right time in order to increase the number of sales you close. We will look at the types of questions to ask at each phase of the sale, with practical examples. You will see how questions can be a simple and effective tool for improving your sales results.

Keys to effective preparation before meeting a prospect

The key to a successful meeting lies in careful preparation. Preparation gives you confidence, shows your professionalism and makes you more efficient. It allows you to ask relevant questions and adjust your approach to your contact’s specific needs. The better prepared you are, the less of your prospect’s time you will take. Everyone appreciates quick, efficient meetings.

So how do you prepare properly for a sales meeting? Follow these two essential steps.

Understand your prospect’s context

Start by researching your target and their company. It is crucial to grasp their context: their challenges, objectives, issues, competitors, values and more.

Use a variety of sources, such as the company website, social networks, press articles and customer reviews, or contact people in the company directly for more detailed information. The goal is to develop an in-depth understanding of your target’s position, their needs and how receptive they might be to your proposal. Of course, you need to stay reasonable: preparation must not become an excuse for contacting too few prospects. You need to be able to quickly analyze what is relevant. Set up a recurring to-do list, like a recipe you refine over time and apply to every prospect. Once that recipe is in place, a good part of it can even be automated.

This approach will help you refine your questions and personalize your sales pitch.

Define the objective of your contact

The second phase is to determine precisely what you want to achieve during your sales meeting. For example, this could be:

Scheduling an appointment to present your proposal.
Requesting information to prepare your meeting with the decision-maker, which is very useful for ABM strategies.
Obtaining preliminary agreement on a commercial proposal.
Finalizing the signature of a contract.

Your objective should follow the SMART criteria: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound, while being aligned with how far along you are in the sales cycle. If this is your first contact, it is essential to prioritize building trust and understanding needs before proposing your solution.

The objective of your meeting must fit logically into your target’s current situation and into your overall sales strategy.

Opening questions to start a business relationship

Your sales meeting is prepared, and it is time to meet your prospect. But how do you start the conversation effectively? How do you break the ice and establish a climate of trust from the very first moments?

The key lies in using opening questions. These open-ended questions cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. On the contrary, they encourage your future customer to share their thoughts in detail. They offer multiple advantages:

They tell you about the person, exploring their context, needs and motivations.
They demonstrate your interest and active listening, strengthening your relationship with the person.
They steer the conversation toward the points that interest you, and make the transition to more specific questions easier.

To help you, here are two examples showing how to use opening questions to build a connection with your target.

Can you give me an overview of your current situation?

This question aims to grasp your prospect’s current context and identify any problems or opportunities worth exploring. It also helps you check that the information gathered during your preparation is accurate and up to date.

Depending on the prospect’s industry, you can personalize this question by asking, for example:

How is your business doing these days?
What major challenges are you facing in your role?
What results are you aiming to achieve this year?
What are your main concerns for this year?

What could improve your current situation?

This question helps uncover your target’s deeper needs, expectations and motivations. Its purpose is to create a sense of urgency and stimulate interest in the solutions you offer.

The question can be adapted to the problems you can solve or the benefits you can offer. You could ask:

What is holding back your results?
What improvements are you looking for in your current situation?
What could save you time or money, or improve the quality of your operations?

Questions to identify the prospect’s needs

Establishing an initial connection with your prospect through opening questions naturally leads you to the next, crucial phase: precisely identifying their needs. These needs can take the form of challenges, frustrations, unmet desires or results to be achieved.

This process is essential for understanding in depth why your potential customer is interested in your proposal. By correctly identifying the prospect’s needs, you put yourself in a better position to:

Assess the fit between your proposal and their expectations, and determine whether you can bring them real added value.
Adjust your pitch to their specific needs, showing them how your proposal can address those needs effectively.
Create a sense of urgency and necessity that will encourage them to take the plunge.

To do this, you need to ask targeted questions that will help you explore the prospect’s issues in depth and understand their origins, implications and solution criteria. Let’s look at three types of questions that make it easier to identify the prospect’s needs.

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

This essential question aims to isolate the main problem driving the search for a solution. The goal is to grasp the exact nature of what is causing difficulty, missing or in need of improvement in their current situation.

Depending on your target’s field of activity, you can personalize your question. For example:

What is the main difficulty you face in running your sales?
What is holding back the growth of your revenue?
What priority improvement would you like to make to your website?

What have you tried so far to address this problem?

This question aims to uncover the solutions the prospect has already considered or implemented, and to assess how effective they were. It helps you understand whether the person has already tested a competing offer, tried to solve the problem on their own, or postponed or abandoned the search for a solution.

Depending on your proposal, the competition and the market, you could ask:

Have you ever used a sales management tool? Which one? What was your experience?
Have you brought in a consultant or an agency to boost your revenue? How did that collaboration go and what were the results?
Have you ever tried to build or optimize your website yourself? With which tools, and what were the main obstacles?

How does this problem affect your business or your day-to-day?

This question assesses the concrete impact of the problem on the prospect’s business or daily life, whether in financial, organizational or emotional terms, and so on.

Depending on the potential impact of your proposal and the prospect’s industry, you could ask questions such as:

What consequences does your sales organization problem have on your profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction, etc.?
What opportunities are you missing because of your difficulty in increasing revenue? Do you have an estimate of the shortfall?
What frustrations do you experience because of problems with your website? How does this affect your brand image, visibility, credibility, etc.?

How to qualify a sales opportunity

Qualifying a sales opportunity starts with identifying the prospect’s needs. The goal is to determine whether the opportunity is real, viable and profitable. Qualifying a person means checking their financial capacity, their decision-making authority and their interest in acquiring your product.

The benefits are numerous:

Avoid spending time and resources on prospects who are not ready to buy, lack the necessary budget or do not hold decision-making power.
Prioritize the most promising prospects in terms of urgency, profitability and interest, improving your conversion rate.
Identify and prepare answers to potential objections that could hinder the sale.

To qualify a prospect effectively, it is recommended to ask closed questions, which call for clear, concise answers. These questions will help you:

Confirm or refute assumptions, data or qualification criteria.
Assess the prospect’s level of interest, commitment and maturity.
Close the sale or move on to the next phase of the sales cycle.

Here we explore three key questions inspired by the BANT qualification model (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) to assess an opportunity.

What impact would solving this problem have on your company?

This question helps you pin down the added value of your proposal for the prospect, which justifies its cost. You will discover the financial, operational and strategic benefits, among others, that can be gained by solving their problem. The question can be adjusted to the specific benefit your service provides, the prospect’s industry, their market, and so on.

Example questions include:

What would you gain in productivity, profitability, customer satisfaction, etc., by solving your sales problem?
What impact would increasing your revenue have on growth, competitiveness, customer loyalty, etc.?
How would an improved brand image, visibility or credibility be perceived once your website is optimized?

What budget have you planned?

This question determines whether the person’s budget matches your offer. It lets you assess whether they have set aside a budget for the solution they are looking for. The context of your product or service, the competition and the market all influence how you phrase this question.

You could ask, for example:

What budget is allocated to investing in a sales organization tool?
How much are you prepared to spend to boost your revenue?
What budget can you allocate to creating or updating your website?

Have you considered other solutions? If so, which ones?

This question reveals whether the prospect has explored other options and assesses their knowledge of the market. It allows you to position yourself clearly against the competition. How you phrase this question depends on the type of proposal you offer, the competition and the market.

Possible questions include:

Have you looked at other sales management software offers? Which ones caught your attention?
Have you consulted other consultants or agencies to increase your revenue? What were their advantages and disadvantages?
Have you tested other tools or platforms to create or update your website? What benefits or limitations did they present?

Questions to define the prospect’s expectations

The first phase after qualifying a sales opportunity is to precisely identify your prospect’s expectations. These may include the results they hope for, the benefits they are looking for, and the specific criteria and conditions the person wants to see met with your product. These expectations are fundamental because they steer the choice toward your proposal rather than another.

Understanding expectations is crucial for several reasons:

It lets you check whether your proposal really meets the needs and whether you can bring real added value.
It gives you the opportunity to adjust your commercial proposal so that it matches the prospect’s expectations perfectly, showing how it can meet their needs and reach their goals.
Finally, it helps create a sense of satisfaction and loyalty in the prospect, fostering a lasting relationship.

To identify the prospect’s expectations clearly, it is recommended to ask open-ended questions. These questions are essential for grasping what your target is really looking for, what matters to them, and what could convince or reassure them. Here are two examples of relevant questions to ask.

What is the ideal result you expect from this solution?

This crucial question helps you understand your target’s concrete expectations regarding your proposal, and how they intend to evaluate its success. It is about grasping the ultimate benefit the person hopes to obtain. This question can be adapted to the type of solution you offer, the industry concerned, the target market, and so on.

Here are a few possible variations of this question:

What specific result do you expect from this sales management software? How do you plan to evaluate its effectiveness?
What would be the ideal outcome for you following our consulting service? How do you intend to measure its impact?
What results do you expect from your new website? How will you determine its success?

What are the decisive criteria for choosing a supplier or service provider?

This question uncovers the elements the prospect considers essential when comparing and selecting a supplier or service provider. The aim is to identify the selection criteria, the key success factors and the differentiators the person considers crucial. You can adjust this question according to the criteria you can highlight, the competitors, the market, and so on.

Examples of variations of this question:

Which criteria are decisive for you when choosing a sales management tool? What aspects make the difference in your eyes?
What do you consider essential when choosing a consultant or an agency? What builds your trust?
What criteria do you base your choice of a tool or platform for your website on? Which points appeal to you most?

Questions to align on the next phases

Once the prospect’s expectations are defined, it is crucial to agree on the next phases of the sales process. These are the actions, commitments or deadlines you undertake to respect in order to move toward closing the sale.

This alignment is essential to make sure the person is genuinely committed, motivated and ready to move forward with the project. Here is why this alignment is so important:

It lets you maintain contact with the prospect, preventing them from losing interest or turning to a competitor.
It helps speed up the sales cycle by reducing the time between the first contact and the signing of the contract.
It helps secure the sale by avoiding last-minute surprises that could compromise the deal.

To align effectively, it is recommended to use closed questions that allow you to validate or discuss actions, commitments or deadlines with the prospect. It is also important to make sure your target agrees with and clearly understands these phases, to avoid any misunderstanding or confusion.

Below are three examples of questions to align on the next phases, inspired by the SMART model (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound):

What is your timeline for making a decision?

This question aims to understand when and how the target plans to finalize their decision. The idea is to identify the timeframe and the decision process so you can adapt to them.

You can personalize this question according to the specifics of the project, for example:

What is your timeline for selecting a sales management tool? What phases do you have in mind?
When do you plan to validate the commercial proposal I presented to you? Who will be consulted?
What is your schedule for starting the creation or redesign of your website? What constraints need to be taken into account?

Who else needs to be involved in the final decision?

This question identifies the other decision-makers, influencers or end users involved in the final decision. Understanding the role, power and expectations of each stakeholder is vital for adjusting your pitch.

Adapt this question to the decision context, for example:

Who else needs to take part in choosing the sales management software? What is their level of involvement and influence?
Who is involved in approving the commercial proposal? What are their criteria and potential objections?
Who are the key players in launching the website project? What are their needs and preferences?

Are there any potential obstacles to implementing the proposal?

This question uncovers any doubts, fears or resistance the prospect may have about the proposal. Identifying possible risks or obstacles is crucial so you can address them and reassure the prospect.

Depending on the type of proposal, consider asking:

Are there any obstacles to integrating the sales organization software? What technical or organizational prerequisites are needed?
What are the potential obstacles to accepting the commercial proposal? How do legal or financial aspects come into play?
What challenges need to be overcome to complete the website project? How do specific deadlines and constraints affect the project?

Questions to ask a prospect: the full list

To wrap up this article, here is a summary of the key questions to ask your prospect at different points in the sales process. These questions are designed to be flexible and to adapt to your specific situation, your proposal and your prospect’s context. They aim to establish a solid foundation for developing your sales pitch and encouraging action.

Here are the recommended questions:

Stage of the sales process	Objective	Questions to ask
Preparation	Understand the prospect’s context and their company	How is your business doing at the moment? What major challenges are you facing in your industry? What results do you want to achieve this year?
Preparation	Clarify expectations for the sales meeting	What do you hope to get out of this meeting? What next step do you have in mind? What result would you like to obtain?
Opening	Build a relationship.	Can you describe your current situation? What are your main concerns? What would improve your current satisfaction?
Identifying needs	Uncover the problem, its causes, consequences and possible solutions.	What specific problem do you want to solve? What have you tried so far to fix it? How does this problem affect your business or daily life?
Qualifying the opportunity	Confirm whether the person has the budget, authority and willingness to buy.	What impact would solving this problem have on your company? What budget have you planned for this purchase? Have you already considered other solutions? If so, which ones?
Defining expectations	Identify the expected results, benefits, selection criteria or desired conditions.	What is the perfect result you expect from this solution? What are the key criteria for choosing a supplier? Do you have any concerns or hesitations?
Aligning on the next phases	Determine or negotiate actions, commitments or deadlines.	What is your timeline for making a decision? Who else needs to take part in the decision? Are there any obstacles to implementing the proposed solution?

By asking these questions, you can build a relationship of trust with your prospect, identify their needs, check that your proposal is a good fit and plan the next actions. You will maximize your chances of closing the sale and satisfying your customer. We hope you find this information useful and put it to work in your next sales conversations.

We are happy to hear any comments or questions you may have, and we will gladly answer them.

You now have the essential tools to question your target effectively and persuade them to choose your product. This overview has guided you through preparing your sales meeting, understanding needs, assessing the opportunity, clarifying expectations and planning the next phases.

You also have at your disposal a series of relevant questions for each phase of the sales cycle, which you can customize to your specific situation.

Now it is time to take action by putting these strategies into practice and using these questions in your future sales conversations. You should see an improvement in your conversion rate, growth in your revenue and higher customer satisfaction.

FAQ

What questions should you ask to sell?

The key to selling effectively lies in the ability to ask relevant questions that reveal the customer’s needs, motivations, expected results, selection criteria and obstacles. Here are some strategic questions to build into your sales approach:

What are your short-term and long-term goals?
What challenges or problems are you currently facing?
What impact do these problems have on your business or personal situation?
Have you already considered or tried any solutions? Which ones?
What is driving your search for a proposal like ours?
What improvements or results do you expect from our proposal?
What criteria define your choice for a product like ours?
What is your budget, and what are your time constraints for this project or purchase?
Who else is involved in the purchasing decision for this project?
What questions or hesitations do you have about our proposal?

What are the 6 types of questions?

There are 6 essential types of questions for stimulating critical thinking and effective communication: informative, descriptive, reflective, metacognitive, affective and conceptual. These questions are designed to encourage analysis, practical understanding, dialogue and creativity.

What questions should you ask your customers?

To get to know your customers better, understand their needs and build a relationship of trust with a view to a sale, it is essential to ask targeted questions. Depending on the context, the service offered and the stage of the sales cycle, here are some universal questions to consider:

What search brings you to this type of proposal?
What are your current goals and challenges?
How do you measure the success of these initiatives?
What criteria do you prioritize when choosing a product?
What are your expectations regarding customer service?
Do you have a specific budget, and what is your timeframe for this project?
Who else is involved in the decision-making process?
What other solutions are you considering?
What strengths and weaknesses do you see in these options?
What is holding you back from taking action?

What are the 7 phases of a sale?

A successful sale relies on a clearly defined process made up of seven essential stages:

Sales preparation: research the target and their environment to define the appropriate sales strategy.
Making contact: establish a first contact based on trust and interest.
Identifying the customer’s needs: use different types of questions to uncover the customer’s specific aspirations.
Sales pitch: present the benefits of your proposal in direct response to the identified needs.
Handling objections: address the customer’s hesitations to strengthen their buy-in to the offer.
Commercial negotiation: discuss the terms of sale to reach an agreement that satisfies both parties.
Closing the sale: close the sale by signing a contract, confirming the order and thanking the customer.

Key questions to ask a prospect to close a sale

Introduction