I’ve talked a lot about getting to know your prospects through purposeful questions, i.e., questions about your prospect’s needs and wants. Dorie Clark writes about their “secret wants,” what author Kevin Allen calls their “unspoken, visceral” motivations.
When you ask questions, you need to get beyond the surface and really help your prospects articulate their underlying wants. Remember: your job is not to sell your product to whoever will buy it, but to those for whom your product is a good fit. Establishing that requires a conversation that gets at the heart of your prospect’s underlying motivations.