The Power of Dumb Little Questions

Years ago, I sold memberships in the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce on straight-commission. The job was tough but it made me into a salesman.

Actually, it was my sales manager Ernie Young who made me into a salesman. Ernie explained that we weren’t in the persuasion business, we were in the finding business. Our job was to talk to business owners one-on-one and find out whether they qualified to be members of the chamber of commerce.

Our ideal prospects were pissed off at government

You see, in New Jersey, there was plenty that made business tough: high taxes, burdensome regulations, unfunded government mandates. On the sales team, we referred to these collectively as The Problem.

The chamber’s job was to fight for business owners by influencing the legislative agenda. So step #1 was to make sure each prospect agreed with The Problem.

“How do you do that?” I asked Ernie.

“I sit down with my prospect and start asking my dumb little questions. If I can get him mad about The Problem, then he’s one of us. Then I can close him.”

In other words, if the business owner could demonstrate to our satisfaction that our message resonated with him, he was a member of our market. Only then would we present our solution, close the sale, and walk out with a check for the first-year dues. (My commission came out of that check.)

The same principle applies to developing your sales & marketing funnel.

Step #1 of your funnel

Step #1 is "Know Your Market." Figure out who you want to market to and what they want to buy from you.

We neglect step #1 because we always we believe we know. Of course we know!

But what if we really don’t. How much time and money will we waste before we finally admit that we don’t exactly know?

The value of getting step #1 right

When you know who you want to market to and what they want to buy from you, you can start asking your dumb little questions. (You need not be sitting across the desk from the prospect. You can ask your dumb little questions on the phone. Or even using an online survey tool.)

Based on the answers, you can determine whether the prospect is qualified to be your customer.

How do you get step #1 right?

Many marketers, when asked to refine their target market, change their prospect avatar from “anybody with a credit card” to “30-year-old electricians with a wife, two kids, and a spotted dog.” In other words, they come up with meaningless distinctions.

It doesn’t work.

To know your market, you need to know who they are, what they care about, where to find them, and how to reach them with your advertising and selling messages.

You need to find out things like demographics and preferences, interests and opinions, beliefs and psychographics.

You need to discover the problems that piss them off and the words they use to talk about those problems. What they’ve tried before that didn’t work. What makes a prospect a good fit for what you do and what makes them a bad fit.

How the market can fool you

Even if you are diligent, it’s tough to get straight answers.

People either tell you what you want to hear, “Yes, I want to make better food choices,” or what makes them look good, “I always watch PBS and never Bridezilla.”

And no matter how good a job you do in the "Know Your Market" step (step #1) you don’t really know for sure until you see the performance of the steps that follow.

Maybe your research indicates that your market appears to be filled with perfect prospects. But when you hit step #6 ("Convert Leads Into Paying Customers") and try to get them to fork over some hard-earned cash — their pocketbook snaps shut.

Why? Sometimes you can misjudge your market. But more often, entrepreneurs approach market research with an uncritical eye.

A smarter way to search for The Truth

The trick to nailing step #1 is to focus on hyper-responsives — the passionate core.

The passionate core of your market will drive adoption. If you can’t get them, you won’t get the masses either.

Remember that Amazon started out as a struggling online bookstore, Facebook as a Harvard social site, Tesla as a high-end electric sports car sold in Southern California. Look at them now.

So focus your message. Focus your investment. Speak to prospects based on age, interests, occupation, experience, etc. Speak to them using the same words and expressions they use.

Done right, prospects will get more than information from your content. They will get a deep-down feeling that you know them. That your offer was designed exclusively for them. That they can say “yes” to with confidence.

And since "Know Your Market" is the first step in your marketing funnel, any improvement in step #1 will increase the efficiency of every subsequent step in your marketing.

There’s power in those dumb little questions.