10 Different Questions You Should Ask Potential Clients

Your potential client is your biggest competitor—their level of stress over a project or their sense of feeling overwhelmed or uninformed can easily derail a deal, says industry advisor Mark Richardson in this episode of Remodeling Mastery.

He says you should rethink how you communicate with clients, and offers 10 questions you need to ask in order to increase your business.

Listen to the full episode below

Timestamps

00:47: Intro

5:52: Asking polite “soft” questions

7:10: Inquiring about the level of investment clients want to put into their project

9:13 Asking about the priorities of a significant other

11:08: Finding out if clients are prepared to make space in their life for this project

13:26 Gauging how clients feel about the project direction

17:06: Closing questions to ask during the first meeting

19:35: Prioritizing client’s wants vs. needs

21:30 Asking clients how long they expect to stay in their home

23:02: Finding out what research clients have has been done for the project

24:41: Politely asking for referrals

Transcript

Mark Richardson:

Mastery is a podcast series designed to help you think about, reflect on your business, not just do your business. What I try to do is take different topics and themes that I think are especially relevant, that I'm seeing out there that are helpful to help you to really take your business to the next level. 

This podcast series is supported by many of my alliances, certainly Professional Remodeler, the associations, as well as many of the technology providers that are out there to try to help you take your business to the next level. 

Today, I want to talk about a topic that I think is not only relatively timeless, but especially important today. Sales, marketing, and how you communicate with the client, is so, so important. And I've said many, many times, your client, the prospect is your biggest competitor. And what I mean by that, it's really their stress, it's their feeling overwhelmed, it's their fears, and it's certainly their ignorance about how to go about doing a remodeling. So the topic and theme today is really focused on the power of questions and mastering how to ask questions. You know, it's been said, If you don't know the answer, at least know the question. 

You know, I've worked with many remodelers as an advisor and coach, and I joined boards of companies, and oftentimes you don't have the answer, but at least you know what the right question is to ask. And I think if you can kind of adopt that kind of thinking, you don't necessarily know the answer for the client, but at least you can know the right question to ask, the 80/20 rule, I think, is such an important rule when it comes to questions, you know you want to listen 80% of the time and speak 20% of the time, and when you think about that, the only way that you're going to be able to speak only 20% of the time is if you're asking the client or the prospect the question and letting them give you the insights. And if you allow that to happen, and you are really focused on active listening, not just listening to prepare for your next comment, I think you're going to be much clearer in terms of being able to help them buy in the remodelings process, not necessarily just sell them. 

Now, asking questions certainly is a human thing. It's something that becomes very natural, I think, to all of us. I think the difference though, between those that are asking the best questions, framing the best questions, doing so in a very conscious way, is, in fact, the masters. And the only way you're going to become masterful at something is if, in fact, you prepare. You know, mastery is an interesting thing, and I've talked about the four levels of mastery that Vince Lombardi's son talked about in his book, Baby Steps to Success. And level four mastery is when you become unconsciously competent. In other words, you don't have to think about the question that you're going to ask anymore, and the only way that you're going to get there is you're going to have to practice them. So words matter, the language matters, and even the pause in the amount of space between questions matters so that the client has enough space to be able to answer these questions thoughtfully, to give you really the guidance that you want. Now, in this spirit of the takeaways when it comes to the prospect and when it comes to the client, you've got to really think about yourself differently. And I've said this for a long, long time, you've got to think of yourself as a therapist. Well, a therapist is really good about asking questions. How do you feel about something? What is coming to mind when you hear this? You know you also have to think about yourself as a marriage counselor. You're there to kind of create the alignment when it comes to the partners and the spouses, and you're talking about questions wrapped around their priorities, or how they go about communicating, or what's most important to them. You're also an investment advisor, so you're going to ask questions about their goals, and their goals when it comes to investments are short, medium and long-term. They also have risk and risk tolerance when it comes to the kind of investments that they're thinking about. And I think the more that you really think of yourself as a marriage counselor, as a therapist and as an investment advisor, you will then sharpen your acts and get better at the kind of questions that really wrapped around that. 

Okay, so let's dive in. I'm going to give you 10 kinds of questions or categories of questions that you can work on. What I would encourage though, don't just passively listen to what I'm saying in this podcast. Actually get out a pad of paper. Jot these things down. Jot down what really kind of hit a chord or resonated for you, but also use it as a tool to practice with others. If you have a team, for example, you know, use this podcast as a tool to really make it a discussion topic. What are their most important questions, what resonated really for them in the course of it? And I think you can really help not only yourself, but you can help the team kind of take their game to the next level. 

Okay, question number one really focuses around a little bit more of a category, and it's permission type of questions. Keep in mind this client, even though they called you, you're still a stranger to them, you're still a foreigner to that particular prospect. So one of the things that you want to do to soften and be able to weave in your advice is to ask more permission based type questions. For example, do you mind if? And you can say, Do I mind if I set the stuff down in this table over here? Do you mind if I share a few ideas with you? Do you mind if we walk outside and take a look? Do you mind if you know, it's a very polite question that eases into what you want to do and allows you to control the process. Another permission based question is, would it be helpful if I shared what others are doing here? You know, it's very controlling but it allows you to control the client and control the agenda. You know, have you thought about? You know, is a way to ask for permission for you to dive in and maybe suggest an idea or two that is not necessarily one they've thought about,

Okay, number two on my 10 list of questions, one of the challenges I think a lot of people have is when they kind of broach the subject of budgeting or broach the money discussion. And you know, I don't think this is like the first question that you ask when you're getting to know somebody. But what I usually encourage is a real deep dive in your initial conversation, initial call with a client, generally 20 or 30 minutes long, is when you get into, say, minute number 14, 15, 16, in that conversation, you might ask the question, have you thought about the level of investment that they would like to put into this project. Now, again, it all starts with a question. You ask them the question, and it all is the right kind of words. It's not, how much do you want to spend? As if you thought about the level of investment, have you thought about the budget for this project. Investment in budget is theirs, cost and price is yours. So the more that you get them starting to think about it's their investment into the project. But it also broaches a subject. When you ask a question, it's almost like a ping pong nudge, more times than not when you ask that question, have you thought about the level of investment that you'd like to put in this project? At least 80% of the time, they're going to hit the ball back to you and say, Well, you know, I'm really not sure what do you think, or that's why you're here. I'd like to get your insights on this. So by asking that question, you're setting up a dialog. You're setting up a conversation that they will hit the ball back to you, and now they're giving you permission. Well, would it be helpful if I kind of walked you through what other clients are finding? So it's a very soft way to ask the question, how much do you want to spend? And if you do it in the right kind of way. It's not only comfortable, but they're really asking and giving you permission…