What Your Doctor Can Teach You About Sales

What Your Doctor Can Teach You About Sales
. . . Get Free Sales Training NOW by going here: www.reneehribar.com

We cannot assume our potential clients know how to describe their pain any more than our doctor assumes we know how to properly diagnose our own health issues.

There are ALWAYS seen and unseen factors at play.

If you give a diagnosis too soon, you may be killing your patient.

If you send them home with a bandaid because they were bleeding but they had internal organ damage the lawsuits on you…

It’s the same with questions like these…

“How much for a headshot”? asked to a photographer

“How much for a weekend in Vegas?”
asked to a Travel agent

“How much to get my ads up and running” asked to a Facebook Ads Manager

“How much to write my sales page?”
asked to a copywriter

It’s time to STOP the eyerolls and exasperation with the person ASKING and instead shift how we look at the entire question asking process.

How do we do that?

The Question to Close Formula: The right questions to ask in the right order so that you clear the path for yes!!

Listen in . . .

READY FOR MORE? Get Free Sales Training NOW by going here: www.reneehribar.com

TRANSCRIPTION

Hello and welcome to the “S” Word LIVE.

My name is Renee Hribar, sales strategist, TEDx Speaker and author. And my goal today is to help make sales simple and fun. I am so glad to see you here. Say hello, whether you’re live or on the replay.

I am going to talk about what your doctor could teach you about sales.

So if you’re listening live, let me know where you are. I’m in Detroit today, and type a secret word.

What can your doctor teach you about sales?

So for many people and for many of my clients right now, they’re getting lots of private messages, emails, inquiries off their Website, and they’re getting questions that typically they would eye roll and go, oh no not one of those again. Geez, for example, I have. Hello, Alice.

Thanks for watching, Live. I have a client who is a photographer. And so she gets asked quite often about headshots. Oh, what do you charge for headshots? And so before we started working together, when she got asked about headshots, she was like, oh, gosh. Well, after working together and since we have this. This. Exactly. Same formula. Now she knows what to do with those questions. So have you ever gotten those silly questions? And, you know, I’ve had travel agents that I work with get eye rolled because they’re thinking, oh, you know, they had a question saying, well, how much for a weekend trip to Vegas? They’re like, oh, jeez, not again. Well, again, how do we turn those questions into paying clients? So I’m going to talk about the question to close formula, but I wanted to frame it out first with something specific. So hello, Alice. Hello, Pamela. Say hello as you join, whether you’re on live or on the replay. So how can doctors teach us about sales? What can your doctor teach us about sales? So if you’re on my email, you might have gotten a secret special message, I just sent it out about 20 minutes ago. And there’s a special code that you can type in. But let’s get down to the meat and potatoes of it. Recently I had a client who did a talk. And immediately after her talk, it was a virtual talk, she received a message from the founder of the organization that she was doing a speech for. And initially she wanted to say, oh, yeah, we’re just buddies. You know, she doesn’t really need anything from me. Right. But instead, now that we’re working together, she showed me what exactly the person sent and what they sent was, hey, great job on the talk. I was taking lots of notes. I’m always thinking about how we can figure out a way to work together. Your marketing is so amazing. Right. So in the past, before we started working together, before she learned the question to close formula, which I’m about to teach you, she would have  just discounted it or maybe just gone back and forth a little bit and then blown it off. But here is the kicker.

Hello, Melody. Nice to see you. Hey, I need to talk to the doctor. That’s right. So what can your doctor teach you about sales? And what can this specific instance teach you about sales, especially my question to close formula?

So if you ever get these types of questions, so let’s imagine your calling your doctor. Hey, doc, you know, I got a headache. Oh, it’s a real severe headache. I’m feeling, you know, like my head is just pounding and I’m echoing and Oh, my goodness. So if you call the doctor and asked that question, what would they say or if you said, hey, so what’s the prescription for headache medicine? You know, can you just can you just prescribe me something quickly? If you don’t have a history with them, if you’re not an existing patient, if you’re not already being cared for by them, are they going to be able just write a prescription? No. So why would we expect that of ourselves? So if someone asks us a simple question, if I mean, asking my doctor what he can do about my headache is actually a pretty simple question. But hey, could be a symptom of a brain tumor. It could be a symptom of dehydration or that time of the month.

Who knows? The question is he doesn’t know until he what asks me more questions.

And so that is what the first part is from the question to close formula. So get out your pens and paper. This is the time to write this down. Take notes in your notes section on your phone, wherever you’re listening to this, whether this is a podcast or whether this is a livestream, whatever platform you’re on. This is a gold nugget. The first thing is when you get asked a question, the real thing is you have to ask more questions in return.

That’s number one thing.

Number one thing, ask more questions, because how could you possibly know your doctor has been teaching you this for years. You can ask. You can come in with a question. You can have a specific symptom. Hey, I want to know about headshots. Hey, how much is it for a quick trip to Vegas? Hey, how much is it to run Facebook ads? Hey, how much does it cost to write my sales page? So whether you’re a photographer, a travel agent, a copywriter or a Facebook ads manager?

You might get questions like that. Tell me below in the comments. Do you get questions like that? Do you get these little questions that maybe you could quickly answer? But if you do quickly answer, you might cause more harm than good. And this is part of what your doctor has been teaching you for years about sales.

So when I get this person, when I ask more questions, when this question comes in and I take the first step of the question to close formula and I ask more questions, I’m not trying to sell them anything. What I’m trying to do is get the full picture, because without the full picture, I can not possibly know if I can even help them or if my advice would be any good. Maybe I might refer them to someone.

Right. So that’s the second part is get the full picture.

So number one, ask more questions. Number two, get the full picture. But then I get this question. Renee, well how do I get the full picture? What do I actually ask? And this is the third and vital part of the question to close formula. After teaching and selling, I mean, selling millions of dollars in products and services, teaching thousands of people to sell since 1994. So I mean it’s two thousand twenty. That’s twenty six years. Yes, I’m old enough. What I can say is you have to ask the right questions in the right order at the right time. So in this question to close formula, what your doctor has already been teaching you for years is this.

So let’s go through it. Number one. What do you want to accomplish with this? So if they come at you and you’re a photographer and they say, how much is it for a headshot?

Your first question is like, listen, I have to ask more questions. I want to get the full picture. Here’s the first question. What do you want to accomplish with that headshot? Maybe they have a new speaking engagement coming up. Maybe they want to have family photos. Maybe they wanted to put it on their business card. Well getting it printed on their business card. And having it digitally might require different shots, might require different things. Maybe they want to use it on their ads or their Website. Does it need to be on a billboard? So, I mean, that would be a whole other set of questions, a whole other part of the picture, and that might inform more questions that you need to ask. So the first question is, what do you want to accomplish with this? So whether you’re a photographer or a travel agent, a business coach like, hey, how much does it cost to get my business up and running? Business coaches get those questions all the time. Well, that depends. I need to ask more questions to get the full picture. And here are some questions you can ask. The first question we already went through was, what do you want to accomplish with it? The second question is, how do you imagine this happening? So whether you’re a photographer or a travel agent or business coach, the person that’s asking it may not be able to speak your exact language, but they definitely have an idea of how they might have imagined it happening. And by them expressing that to you, you’re going to understand where they’re coming from a lot better. Right. Well, I imagined it, you know, drive through.

Ok. That changes things. Or I imagined a course that I might take in and watch tutorials, OK? Or I imagined you and I walking out together on a on a wooden path. OK. I don’t know. So what you don’t know, that’s the answer. You don’t know. So you have to ask that question. So a part of the question to close formula is how do you imagine that happening? Number two. Number three, finally, is when do you imagine that happening? How many times have you met really well intentioned, smart business people or smart potential clients, but they ask silly questions. It’s not because they’re not smart, it’s not because they’re not intentional, but because they just don’t know. Right. So when my doctor asks me these questions, he doesn’t respond as if I’ve gone to medical school. Right.

He responds in my own language. That is another lesson that your doctor has been teaching you for years about sales. So when you respond and answer these questions now, you’ll be able to speak their language. Right. So that is so vital when you imagine this happening, because many people don’t know how long things take to do. I’ve had lots of clients who are copywriters that get initially upset because people don’t understand how long it takes to write a long form sales copy or the value of it. And so obviously that might be another conversation for another time, but they have to educate them and they’re never going to know what they need to educate this potential client on until they know where the potential client is coming from. So we just went through the the question to close formula. And hopefully today, just with what you’ve learned here now, you will be able to take that next question that you get and turn it into a new paying client. I am so glad that you have me today for the “S” Word LIVE. I will see you again here lie next week.