Some of the worst Account Executives have one thing in common

Some of the worst Account Executives have one thing in common...

Buyers don't feel comfortable answering their questions

These AEs are mostly doing the right thing:

- They're asking lots of questions

- They're digging into priorities

- They're asking about problems

- They're not pitching too much

etc

But prospects just don't open up about anything real. They give short answers to questions.

Now, the best AEs are masters at...

✅ Getting buyers to share STORIES

They don't pepper prospects with dozens of logic-based questions.

They phrase questions in a way that gets a buyer to open up about how they feel.

Here's an example.

Let's say you sell an HR solution. This solution helps combine all HR functions (payroll, recruiting, workforce management, etc.) in one place.

Your buyer is using a separate solution for all of those.

⛔️ Bad way to dig for pain

"What don't you like about your current HR setup?"

"What's the biggest challenge with your HR setup?"

"How much time is your team spending every week manually processing payroll?"

"How much do you like your current solution on a scale of 1-10?"

These aren't terrible questions. But they're vague and feel too much like an interview or interrogation.

✅ A better way to dig for pain

Get more nuanced with questions. Get in the buyer's day to day.

1) Get specific with questions:

"When did you notice that your disconnected HR tools were a problem?"

"Mind walking me through the last time you onboarded a new employee?"

"When you want to run payroll, what feels harder than it should be?"

2) Ask great follow-up questions:

"Can you give me an example of that?" "Tell me more..."

3) Compare/contrast using customer stories:

"An HR leader earlier today was sharing a big focus on international hiring moving into 2025. The process required a lot of work from their team to set up hiring in new countries. And many countries were pretty fuzzy about the paperwork required. I'm curious, how does this compare to your experience hiring international employees?"

Load stories into the front of your questions

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These techniques will help you open up buyers so they'll participate in discovery with you.

What's your favorite discovery question?