The power of what, why and how? Here’s why I’m a big advocate of overcoming your pride, remembering your inner toddler and asking open-ended questions you might be a bit too afraid to ask.
What don’t you know?
Following disruption to UK manufacturing caused by COVID-19 and Brexit as documented by IHS Markit’s recent research, many UK manufacturers are seeking opportunities to build relationships with new audiences in sectors that haven’t previously been core to their growth strategy. They want to engage with high-value prospects in sectors that are notoriously difficult to influence such as the aerospace, aviation or renewable energy sectors. They may well have a great offer but to engage and influence the right contacts you need insight.
Why you need to ask questions to grow your business
Let’s look at a business growth strategy that is taking the engineering and manufacturing industry by storm - account-based marketing or ABM.
ABM is founded on insight. Insight that enables you to finely tune your marketing and sales and highly personalise your content so that it has a tangible impact on your customers – providing them with a solution, not just a product. Successful businesses understand their market and their audience. Whether that’s finding out who’s involved in the decision-making process and what they get motivated, frustrated, or excited about or getting a deeper understanding of the customer challenges they face and what keeps them awake at night.
Sometimes, making prospects sit up and listen so that they convert into customers, is more about showing them what the business risk will be by not taking your product or service rather than what they will gain if they do. To do that, you need to understand their business, their pain, not just focus on the features and benefits of what you have to offer. You don’t get that deep understanding and insight unless you’re curious and are asking the right questions.
Listen to your sales team
Finding out more about your current customers will help you learn what can make a difference with your new audiences. Your sales team is invaluable here. Sales are your frontline, so it’s vital they’re asking the right questions to be able to feedback the insight needed to reel in a big fish.
Depending on how you manage your marketing and sales process, your sales team may feel under pressure to be in touch with as many prospects or customers as possible in a given time. This is not how ABM works and is unlikely to catch you the big fish. Eking out insights takes research, time and the art of conversation – it’s not a pitch. Each response to a question will lead to another question.
Ask the right questions
Remember the toddler analogy? That’s what you want from your sales team, however, there’s a fine line between asking questions and asking the RIGHT questions. You don’t want to annoy your customers. Only by listening and asking pertinent follow-up questions will you eventually get to the real customer insight, the nub of the issue that is affecting their business.
Your marketing team will then be able to use this invaluable insight, that your competitors have no idea about, to develop content that hits the spot and can be personalised to your different big fish targets. Then, when your sales team is invited in, the conversation will naturally focus on how you can help diminish your prospect’s business risk, solve an issue or convert an opportunity rather than focus on the features of your product, technology or service. It may take a change in the sales process and mindset, but it will be worth it.
Do you really know your customer’s business?
So, when’s the last time you asked your existing customers who they were selling to and why? What they thought they were good at and why? What challenges and issues their customers had and why? What they want to achieve in the next year, three or five years, and why, why, why? Only by knowing this and understanding what’s worked well before, what their current barriers to success are, and where they think future opportunities might come from can you know how to help them achieve their goals which leads to you achieving yours.
When everything is running smoothly it’s easy to keep the status quo and carry on regardless but it’s important to recognise that the world around us doesn’t stand still. Keeping up to date and relevant is vital to success. Questioning why we’re doing things and looking for new ways of getting a better outcome should form part of normal business. If you’re afraid to question your customers, because you’ve been working with them for years and you feel you should already know the answer, you might be missing a trick.
Curiosity doesn’t kill the cat. It will give you a deeper, more rewarding understanding of your audience and the clarity to be able to influence them. If you’re curious and want to be curiouser – take a look at our website and ask us some questions.
