Clients always have issues, whether they’re problems to solve or opportunities to capture. You may need to raise these issues with the client … or they may bring them up themselves.
The first step is to have an initial discussion about the issue. You’ll want to lead or influence this conversation and here are 7 prompts to help with that:
- What are the details surrounding the issue?
- How is the current situation not working, or inadequate?
- Who is directly affected by this issue? And who else?
- Why is it crucial for the client to take action now?
- What can be accomplished? And what value will that deliver for the client? What are the critical success metrics?
- What is the potential impact of taking action?
- What is the potential consequence of doing nothing?
Mini-mission
You need to collaborate with the client to have answers to these questions.
So run your biggest deal through these prompts and identify what you still don’t know.