The RockStar Success Library: Crystal Clear

The RockStar Success Library

A collection of articles to help business owners, entrepreneurs, and salespeople become RockStars in their professional lives!

Crystal Clear

In many ways, sales is a transfer of enthusiasm. Whether you are selling a multi-million dollar software package, or you are selling your significant other on your movie choice for the evening, your goal is to get the other person as excited as you are. Excited enough to take action. One of the ways that you can help people to take ownership of this enthusiasm is to ask crystallizing questions.

Questions in themselves can help engage your customer and clients, but crystallizing questions are a powerful tool to help get the other person agreeing with you on basic points. Instead of you telling them about what makes your point of view so cool, and asking them to agree, you are going to have them tell you why they think your ideas are great.

How do you do this?

It's pretty simple. Instead of making statements, you take a statement and add a short, agreement question after it. For example, instead of saying, "Saving time is a good thing." you say, "Saving time is a good thing, isn't it?" Whether or not they verbalize the answer, they are thinking in their head, "Of course, saving time is a good thing." They've spoken from their perspective and they've owned that perspective.

A big caveat here. This only works with statements that the customer agrees with. It doesn't work if it's something that is controversial or that you haven't convinced them of. You can't say, "That's a good deal, isn't it?", if it isn't a good deal for the customer. These questions work best when you are creating a foundation at the beginning of the conversation or when you want to make sure they are on the same page as you.

Some examples:

It's good to work with a reputable company, isn't it?
The savings on labor would really add up, wouldn't they?
It makes sense to get the best long-term value for your money, doesn't it?
These look great, don't you think?
It'll be nice getting this decided so you can move on to the next part of the project, won't it?

These create clarity in the customers mind, and they can be just as enthusiastic as you are. Crystallizing questions are great, aren't they?

What are your favorite crystallizing questions?