Natural Curiosity

Remember when you were a little kid and you wanted to know everything? Why is grass green? What makes the sky blue?  Why does my little sister have freckles?  What’s a freckle?  Even the most egocentric of us possesses natural curiosity – a desire to know more about things that come into our orbit. Unfortunately for some of us, our natural curiosity is somewhat under-developed and therefore, useless to us as a sales tool. All is not lost though! Natural curiosity, just like a muscle that hasn’t been used for a long time, responds well to exercise and a bit of flexing.

How can curiosity be a sales tool? In order to find out exactly what will be the right solution for your client, you need information and the best way to get that information is to ask the client. Sure, there are standard, one-size-fits-all questions to ask that will elicit some of the information you need, but what about the information that is pertinent only to an individual customer?  How are you going to find out about their personal truths and feelings just by asking stock questions?

This is where your natural curiosity will make the difference between a good sales solution and an outstanding one. If a customer tells me they need a new phone, I’d feel compelled to ask what types they’ve had in the past and how did they find them. Eventually, I’d find out that they have broken the last three mobile phones they’ve owned. My natural curiosity would lead me to think, well, that seems odd. I wonder why they’re breaking them. 

So then I’d ask what kinds of phones were they? “All different.”  OK, so that’s not the source of the problem. Then I might consider how the customer was using them and I’d ask, so what were you doing when the phones broke?  “The first one fell out of my pocket into a batch of fresh cement. The second one’s screen broke when I accidentally left it on a pile of bricks and when the bricks were moved, the phone fell and broke. The third one got smashed when a pile of paving tiles were delivered right on top of it.”

Knowing all this, I’d be more inclined to come up with a solution that would work for this customer. Just selling him another phone, even if that’s all he asked for, isn’t going to solve the problem of the chronically damaged phones, but maybe a simple device like a leather pouch that fits onto his belt will help keep his new phone out of harm’s way.  

If your natural curiosity could use a little flexing, ask yourself why. No, I don’t mean why does it need flexing, I mean ask yourself WHY about everything you hear.  When your customer is telling you something, keep an open mind and ask yourself, WHY did this happen, then try asking your customer the same thing.  You’ll find a whole heap of sales opportunities opening up to you just by using that one tiny little word, WHY.