How to Get Information from Clients

It’s not always easy to get information from clients. If you’re in a situation where you have good relationships with your clients, but you’re struggling to get the information you need from them, there are very specific things that you can do that will help you to accomplish that a lot faster and a lot more organically. It’ll just feel better when you’re doing it right, and they’ll be a lot more likely to help you with it.

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David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist, and I will be discussing getting information out of clients. Welcome back, Kevin.

Kevin: Hey, welcome back to you too. I’m really excited to talk about this because let’s be honest, like we’re all very conscious of the fact that everyone wants our information, so it’s a bit of a struggle sometimes.

David: Yeah, it really is. And when we’re looking at trying to extract information from clients, sometimes it’s like trying to pull teeth. Or trying to get the information that we need to either advance the sale or to be able to get an order completed and that sort of thing. And it can definitely be challenging.

Kevin: Yeah, no doubt. How much of it do you think is how people ask for the information? Instead of saying like, give me this. Is it better to kind of think about it in more of a storytelling narrative kind of way to pull things out?

David: That’s a great question. I think a lot of it depends on your personality and the way that you communicate with people.

Many salespeople, many of the best salespeople, I think are natural storytellers. You ask them what time it is and it starts with a story. Right? So…

Kevin: Well, it all started back when I was eight.

David: Let’s talk about time, shall we?

Kevin: Yeah.

David: Yeah, so I think it can take that form. I think there are also situations, a lot of times, where we know what we need to get from them, and sometimes if we’re just going for it all the time, that can come across as a little too pushy in some ways.

So I think there’s a natural give and take that needs to happen, so that people can feel engaged with us.

If they feel engaged in the conversation, if they feel that we’re listening to them, paying attention to what they need, and that’s woven in with getting the next piece of information that I need without coming across like an interrogator.

Like I’m going to shine a light on you. It’s like the third degree in the cop movies. Right? If it feels like that, they’re gone.

But when you’re able to just engage them and let them know that you care about getting them a result, then they’re a lot more likely to be free with the information.

Kevin: Obviously at the front end of a sales cycle, it’s more basic information and it keeps going, getting more detailed as things go on. Should people change their approach as they go on from first contacting someone to maybe having a warm or even hot lead?

David: Definitely, and I think you raised exactly the right point there, which is that it does generally start out more general and then it gets more and more specific as you’re getting down to it.

Sometimes salespeople will lead with things like, what’s your budget? Right? Which is kind of intrusive, right?

Kevin: Yeah. That’s the one, right?

David: You don’t need to ask me about my budget if I’m not buying anything from you, right?

Kevin: Yeah, yeah. What’s your budget? What’s your timeline? Right? Isn’t that what everybody always says first?

David: Yeah. And that’s not the kind of thing that generally needs to come first.

Initially, what needs to happen is they need to feel some sort of connection. They need to have a clear idea of what you do, how you can help them, and all that sort of thing.

So I think a lot of times, in the early stages of a relationship when we’re first meeting a prospect, it is information gathering from us, but it’s about trying to find out what they need, what they’re looking for, where they have issues, where they have problems that we can potentially help.

And some of that can feel intrusive if we’re not doing it well, if we’re not doing it correctly. But when we’re doing it right, it feels very natural.

If they understand that we are really there to provide them with a result that they’re looking for –and if we can provide it, we will, and if we can’t provide it, we’ll tell them that.

If they feel like the relationship is open enough in the early stages to accomplish that, they’ll be a lot more likely to have those conversations

Kevin: I think a lot of times any salesperson will want to focus on customer pain points. Obviously that’s an important thing. What’s a good approach for that?

Instead of going like, Hey, what’s your pain points? What is a better approach to kind of pulling out that information naturally?

David: I think a lot of it is just about trying to figure out, again, going from more general to more specific, trying to identify whether or not there is any sort of need on the client’s behalf.

Because if there’s not, if they don’t need what we’re selling, then we don’t have to drill down too much. We can very often find that out earlier on in the conversation, and we can disqualify them.

In the last podcast, we were talking about different levels of qualification, so I think a lot of that should happen at that point.

If we’re able to disqualify someone very quickly. Let’s say you meet somebody at a networking function. You’re having a conversation and you’re talking about what they do and how they do it. And during that conversation you recognize that this is probably not a prospect for me, this is not the person in the organization who buys what I’m selling or whatever.

So at that point, you can switch gears and say, Hey, listen, who in your organization does this or that? And then you can get referred to that person. You can take that over there and say, all right, maybe I can have a more of a qualification conversation with that person. And then get down into the nitty gritty with them.

I think a lot of problems that salespeople run into come from the fact that they dive into sales presentations before they ever qualify or disqualify the client.

Kevin: Yeah.

David: I’ve had so many conversations with salespeople who talked about the fact that they couldn’t get an appointment with a person before they even knew whether or not that person was worthy of an appointment. Before they even knew whether or not they were qualified to do business with them.

Very often, you can find something like that out in a phone conversation or via email in a matter of minutes, rather than wasting a lot of time, setting up an appointment, going out, meeting the person, and then finding out that they’re not qualified.

I learned that one pretty early on in my sales career because I thought the goal was to get the appointment.

So I would try to get appointments with people, and then when I got those appointments, I’d be in front of them and find out, wow, I should not have wasted my time driving to this person’s place and meeting them.

I think a lot of it, is about that. It’s about qualifying quickly and correctly upfront so that we can spend the most time with the people who are actually qualified to do business with us.

Kevin: Is that just because we feel that if we can get in front of somebody that we’re more likely to close a deal? Like because face-to-face has so much value?

David: I think a lot of it has to do with that, and I think a lot of it is training. A lot of people have just been trained that this is what you need to do, go for the appointment.

Again, that’s what I did in the early stages, because that’s what I was taught to do.

Kevin: Yeah, I’ve done it, too. Yeah.

David: But when you recognize that time spent with a qualified prospect is worth 10 times or a hundred times more than it is with an unqualified prospect, you quickly realize that you can create 10 x the results, 20 x the results, 50 x the results when you are able to disqualify.

I use the analogy, it’s like the old game we used to play in kindergarten, musical chairs, right?

So you got all the kids and you got all the chairs, and there’s one less chair than there are kids. And the music starts and everybody’s walking around in a circle and then the music stops, and then everybody has to scramble to find a seat.

Kevin: That’s when you put elbows out and you get that chair, right?

David: Yeah, that’s right. And whoever doesn’t get a seat, they’re out. It’s a cruel game for kids.

Kevin: It kind of is, really.

David: But in sales, man, it’s almost worse when you are the salesperson, because a lot of times prospects like to do that with salespeople.They like to elbow you out, but…

Kevin: Right.

David: The way that I like to approach it is to say I’m far better off if I’m going to be approaching 10 people, I’d like to be able to eliminate six, seven, or eight of them so I can spend the time with the other two or three, and actually make the sale.

I sort of flipped the script on that and say, all right, how can I disqualify the poor quality prospects as quickly as possible, so that we can then interact with those who are willing to share the information we need to be able to get that sale going.

Kevin: A lot of salespeople like to talk. I’ve known a lot of them in my day, and a lot of them just, they love to dominate the conversation. But obviously you need to listen, like a lot, when you’re talking to a prospect.

How do you help people or how do you talk to people about balancing, being informative, but sitting back and letting the client talk.

David: I think a lot of salespeople have to recognize that if you’re doing most of the talking, you’re probably not going to be selling as much as you can sell.

Kevin: Right.

David: Especially in the early stages, you need to let them talk to you about what they want and how they want it. Because if you’re going to do things really well in sales, you want to be repeating back a lot of what they said to you.

If you can take notes on it while you’re having those conversations, that’s great. And sometimes if you’re face-to-face with someone, you can just ask them, “do you mind if I take notes here?”

If you’re on a Zoom call, “you mind if I take notes here?” and I’m typing away, because I want to make sure that I’m capturing what these people are actually looking for. Then I’m going to then use that information to determine if I’m a good fit for them or if I’m not.

One of the things that I think salespeople also lose sight of is that our goal, when we’re in front of a prospect and we’re trying to decide whether or not we’re going to be working with them, all we can decide is if we feel that they are qualified to do business with us, right?

Kevin: Mm-hmm.

David: We’re likely to feel that we’re qualified to do business with them, but that’s not our call to make. That’s their call to make.

So what I like to do in those conversations is I want to find out, is this an ideal prospect, is this an ideal client for me?

And if so, then I’m going to push a lot harder to make that person a client. I’m going to push a lot harder to explain to that person, like, wow, here’s why I think we’re a great fit.

Now, we’re not always right about that. I had a conversation a couple weeks ago with some people and it really felt like they were a perfect fit for it. And then toward the end of the conversation, it just went off in a different direction. And I’m like, “oh, wow, I misjudged this.” And that’s absolutely going to happen.

No matter how long you’re doing this, that’s going to continue to happen. But when you’re able to identify upfront the people that you think are most likely a good fit, they’re going to be worth a lot more of your time and attention than those who don’t meet that criteria,

Kevin: For getting that early information, how much weight do you give something like social listening, like going and looking at forums, looking at LinkedIn, looking at that kind of stuff, and what do you think are the best ways to gather some early information?

David: It’s a great way to do it for those who are already engaged with that, right?

If you’re already on social media, you’re already engaging with people, then I think that’s a great way to go, because you can identify from the conversation, in a lot of cases, whether or not you think you have a fit just based on the way they communicate with other people.

So I think that can be really helpful.

I hesitate to say, yeah, this is a required criteria, because if you’re not on there, I’m not going to say to you, okay, look, first thing you have to do is set up a Facebook account…

Kevin: Set up a LinkedIn page.

David: And LinkedIn. Right, and then you have to create content and you have to do all this stuff for people who are already doing that, I think that’s absolutely fantastic. For those who aren’t, I wouldn’t suggest that you go that way.

Because for every salesperson and your preferences — the way you like to do things — there are very likely clients who like to do things the way that you do.

Kevin: Mm-hmm.

David: And those are going to be your clients.

If you’re not on social media and some other person is, and they feel like that’s where life exists, that’s probably not going to be a good fit for you. So I think a lot of it is also just…

Kevin: You’re going to connect

David: …finding that fit.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. You’re not going to connect in that way, for sure. So if a client is hesitant to share information, do you have any tips to kind of help salespeople refocus?

David: Yeah, I think it’s really important to be able to make it as easy as possible for them to get us the information that we need. Some of that could take the form of prebuilt forms or templates.

And again, we don’t want to get crazy with this stuff. One of the things that drives people away from websites more than anything else is you have a “contact us” form and it’s looking for 25 things. Nobody fills that stuff out.

Kevin: Yep.

David: It’s like, “forget it, I’m not doing that.” So, I think the idea of breaking it into simpler steps, getting a little piece at a time, like very often the best opt-in forms that you’ll find on a website, they’ll just ask for maybe a first name and an email address to be able to provide you with a piece of content.

And people are willing to give that up first. You do it a little bit at a time so that you’re not overwhelming them with requests for information.

Offering different ways to provide you the information is also helpful. Different ways to respond, whether they can email it to you or text it to you, or you can have it in a phone call, or they can enter it into a form, or they can DM you.

Lots of different ways so that people can respond in the way that is best suited to them. I think that’s all important.

Sometimes just explaining why it’s important. A lot of our clients in the print and promotional products industries, we need the artwork, right? I can’t print the order without the artwork.

I need to know how many colors, is it tight registration? I need to know all these things. There are very specific things that I need.

Now, again, you don’t need any of that stuff until they’ve placed the order and they know when they need it, and then at that point you need the stuff pretty quickly. But explaining why you’re asking for the information can also be helpful.

Kevin: Very good.

David: If they understand it, then they’re going to be more likely to comply.

Kevin: Very, very good point on the why. I think that is the thing, again, going back to what we were talking about, I mentioned in the beginning, people are a little hesitant to give out a lot of information, so that’s definitely important. The why.

David: Yeah, and there’s so many different scams out there that are designed to try to get people’s information.

The other thing is don’t ask for stuff you don’t actually need. Right?

Kevin: Yeah.

David: Only ask for the things that are important to the job that you’re trying to do for them. I mean, if you’re having conversations later and you’re having conversations about family or that kind of stuff, that’s great. But when you start out with a lot of that stuff, a lot of people right now find that intrusive.

Kevin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And a waste of time.

David: Yeah. And a lot of salespeople, back in the old days, it was like, “oh, tell me about your family” and everything like that.

Kevin: Right.

David: And people are like, “ooh, I don’t think so.” You know?

Kevin: I don’t want you to know that.

David: That’s right. Yeah.

Kevin: I don’t know who you are.

David: I’ll volunteer that if I want you to know.

Kevin: Right. Well, David, these are great tips. For more tips, how can people get in touch with you?

David: Just go to TopSecrets.com/call. Schedule a call with myself or my team. If you’re in a situation where you have good relationships with your clients, but you’re struggling to get the information from them, there are very specific things that you can do that will help you to accomplish that a lot faster and a lot more organically.

It’ll just feel better when you’re doing it right, and they’ll be a lot more likely to help you with it. TopSecrets.com/call.

Kevin: Awesome stuff. Thanks so much, David. Great chatting with you.

David: Thanks. You too, Kevin.