How Curiosity Leads to MORE SALES

By Ryan Taft

You know, they say curiosity killed the cat.

They also say a cat has nine lives, so they may have a luxury we don’t and can afford to be curious more often.

Enough about cats. Let’s explore why curiosity is a vital skill for sales professionals. Curiosity turns good salespeople into great salespeople and leads to more sales.

Let’s discuss the three benefits of being insanely curious about your customers. When I was a kid growing up in the seventies, I remember watching cartoons every Saturday morning. I wanted to be Superman because I watched Super Friends every Saturday. 

How cool would it be to have a superpower like flying or bouncing bullets off my chest? Now that I’m older, I realize those are not superpowers I will ever have. But there is one superpower that I do have and that I’m always looking to develop. That’s what I want to talk to you about today.

It’s the ability to be curious with your customers. 

Provide Your Customer with a Very Different Experience

Think about the typical experience of a customer walking into a new home sales office anywhere in the country. They tend to get asked the same questions everywhere they go. Sounds something like this, “Hi, welcome. Is this your first visit? How did you hear about us? What size home were you looking for? Are you working with a realtor?”

Sound familiar? It’s ok, go ahead and shame yourself for being the same. You see, these questions are very predictable. Imagine being a customer and going to four or five different sales offices where you hear the same questions. It’d be like being in the movie Groundhog Day. 

The experience becomes boring. The experience is often all about the salesperson. When you’re curious, you flip that switch and become interested in your customer. Now it’s about them and not how they found us or what they’re looking for, which is far more interesting to them. Curiosity makes it a different experience. 

Avoid Having Commission Breath

You practice good dental hygiene because you want to avoid lousy physical breath. You need to do the same for sales hygiene!

Imagine you’re having a cup of coffee with a friend. Somebody you know, somebody you like, and you’re sitting down having this coffee, and your friend says, ” Oh, I might have to move.”

What would you ask your friend right here? Would you ask them, “Well, how many bedrooms are you looking for now?” You probably wouldn’t. Through curiosity, you’d ask your friend, “Why? What do you mean you have to move? What happened?”

You would be curious at that moment because you weren’t trying to sell anything. In other words, you would avoid having commission breath.

Understand the Buyer on an Emotional Level

I’ve attended sales training for years, more than I care to admit, and in every single one of them, and I mean every one of them, somewhere in that training, they said people buy emotionally.

I agree with that. People buy emotionally, but I don’t recall anyone discussing how to get to the emotion. They talked about how to build features and benefits and build value. So I want to share with you the three R’s that will help you understand your buyer on an emotional level.

Ask them to retell their story. That’s where curiosity shines when you’re interested. It’s not our turn to be interesting. We’ll get to that later in the process.

They retell the story of why they’re moving and what they don’t like about their home. There’s a story behind it. When they retell that story, something remarkable happens: they actually relive it.

They time travel and relive the story. You’ll see it in their eyes. They won’t be looking at you. They’ll look up, and they’ll relive it.

After they relive it, something special happens. They magically re-feel those emotions as though they were happening now. You do that, and that’s how you’ll understand that buyer emotionally. It’s beyond asking, “How does that make you feel?”

Those are my three tips on becoming insanely curious, which will take you from a good salesperson to an amazing salesperson. 

Get curious, my friends, and you can change someone’s world.

Until next time, learn more to earn more!