Your Inner CEO: "Run that by me one more time...."

Your purpose in business is always to assist your clients in solving their problems. A great deal of research now suggests that clients want to buy products and services, not be sold to. So, initially, a prospective client will want to know your answers to the following questions: “Do you fully understand the problems I have? And do you have a solution to these problems?”

As soon as you’ve established what a client’s problem really is, your next task is linking those issues to the solutions you offer. But there may be times when you aren’t able to do that. You may not have solutions. If that’s the case, simply apologize for not being able to help and mention alternative sources that might be able to do so.

But assuming you do see an opportunity to assist, you need to be very thorough with your questioning in order to elicit detailed answers: “Tell me how you’d like me to help you solve this problem? What other problems have you experienced?” Try to entice some emotion from the client as well as pure information. Clients will appreciate the time you're taking to understand their needs. They’ll be grateful to you for qualifying them so carefully.

Once this is done, you’re ready to begin a conversation about the benefits you offer. Offer clients key benefits that will address the specific problems you’ve discussed. If clients ask for more information, that’s of course an extremely positive sign. It shows they’re interested in what you've said and shown so far.

Never forget that clients want to get out of hell much more than they want to get into heaven. How can you determine if you’re the right person to help them do that? Summing up, here are the important points you can keep in mind:

Always ask open-ended questions to make sure you understand what clients need. “Let’s keep talking….”

If you believe that you can't provide a solution to clients’ needs, 
just move on. You owe it to both them and yourself not to waste time. This is nothing for anyone to be offended about. It’s just a reality of doing business.  
 
Describe how you've been able to assist other clients with similar
needs. Try to have testimonials from specific individuals to support this. If it becomes clear that there is not a good fit with a prospective client, try to provide a referral to someone else that might be able to help. “What goes around comes around.” Yes, it really does.