Read any book about sales, and you'll see a lot of ink devoted to answering objections.

But they're missing the mark.

Every question is the result of a concern that your prospect has about your product / service.

They may not know how to voice it exactly, so they do what they know how to do; ask you a question about it.

In 99% of cases you're missing the mark if you answer the question they ask. You should, instead, work to understand what the fundamental concern is, and then address that instead of giving a point-of-fact answer.

Don't answer the question directly & ignore the concern. You'll lose the sale every time.

Here's an example.

At the digital marketing agency where I work as the sales trainer, a common question that comes up is:

"How do you guys use AI?"

Simple question, right?

Nope!

They might be asking because they want us to use AI to generate 50 articles for cheap. They might want us to use AI to "do more posts" like they've been told by their 3rd cousin once removed (who knows nothing about marketing). Maybe they don't want us to use AI because they believe it will penalize their rankings due to not being helpful or useful.

If our sales team says "We've been using AI for a long time; it just doesn't look like it. Any time you let Google figure out what keywords to focus on, or optimize your campaigns, you've been using machine learning & "AI" to tweak your strategies."

That doesn't actually do anything to address the central concern / belief that the prospect has about AI.

This is why taking a question at face value is fatal to your business, and why being a mind reader (working to understand their beliefs & motivations about their business) will get you everything you've ever wanted.

Best thoughts,
~Jonathan "see beyond the question" Pritchard