If you’re still ignoring buyer journey questions, it’s time to pause and rewind. I say so because sales is now an increasingly consultative profession. Success today is less about “always closing” and more about “always helping” as a knowledgeable, reliable person that buyers can trust.
Genuinely helping prospects demands providing them helpful and specific resources instead of stuffing irrelevant information down their throats. There’s no other way to come across as someone they trust. But how do you know what’s helpful for them? Asking the right questions for each stage across the buyer’s journey!
If you’re wondering what questions to ask, you’re in the right place. Read along to discover my take on:
- Why Buyer’s Journey Questions Are Essential
- Crucial Questions to Ask Prospects Throughout the Buyer’s Journey
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Why Buyer’s Journey Questions Are Essential
I’ve been harping for the longest time: The sales rep–prospect relationship needs to cut both ways. As your prospects qualify you, you also need to qualify them back. How?
This starts with asking the right sales qualification questions at the right time. These questions will get you in the position to:
- Uncover real needs. Statistically, 72% of buyers expect reps to understand their needs.
Instead of assuming what matters to the prospect, asking buyer journey questions lets you hear it straight from them. - Build trust. Asking thoughtful questions shows you’re invested in helping, not just selling. We all know that nobody likes to be sold to.
- Save time. The right questions help to determine whether a prospect is a good fit or needs more nurturing effort. This intel saves a ton of time.
- Personalize conversations. Since every buyer’s journey is unique, asking the right questions across the different buying stages shows the path to meeting people exactly where they are with empathy and tailored solutions. According to research, 80% of buyers expect more personalized interactions with sales reps, explaining why this is important.
- Move deals forward. Last but not least, the right questions unveil clarity on a buyer’s potential concerns. This makes offering the right solution at the right time remarkably easier.
In essence, in my experience, buyer journey questions are the holy grail to successful sales outcomes. Now, let’s review some of the most effective questions you can ask across the different stages.
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Free Guide: 101 Sales Qualification Questions
101 Questions to Ask Contacts When Qualifying, Closing, Negotiating, and Upselling.
- Budget Questions
- Business Impact Questions
- Competitor Questions
- And More!
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Crucial Questions to Ask Prospects Throughout the Buyer’s Journey
Awareness and Education
This is the top-of-funnel stage where your prospect realizes they have a problem but struggles to articulate it precisely. In turn, they have little or no sense of how to solve it. The marketing team primarily handles such leads, and I suggest avoiding engaging heavily with prospects now. When you do, my best bet is to keep things light, with questions like:
1. What were you looking for help with?
This is a typical icebreaker question. I usually look through the company’s CRM profile before I ask this. Doing so helps me determine what content the prospect engaged with or downloaded, and then I know I have to dig deeper from there.
Remember, like I said, this stage is about keeping it light, just a regular conversation about their needs. So, when you ask this question, try to get them to open up about their business pain and how the content they checked out relates to it.
Pro tip: Take everything they say about their problem early on with a grain of salt. Make your notes, but remember this can change. According to research, buyers can change their problem statement an average of 3.1 times during complex purchases. We’re just asking them this question to get them talking.
2. What challenges prompted you to start looking for a solution?
This question is my go-to for inviting prospects to discuss the root causes of their pain. I advocate asking it because it helps to understand the bigger picture, straight from the horse’s mouth. Often, buyers themselves don’t have clarity and asking this question helps them articulate it better. I’ve seen that this information is eventually quite handy to tailor future conversations around the real issues they care about solving. Also, not to discount, everyone likes a good pair of ears to their problem, right?
3. How are you currently handling this issue?
As a salesperson, I prefer having a baseline from which to work. Understanding their existing process with this buyer journey question gives me exactly that.
Do they rely on internal teams? Google? Industry forums? A competing product? Answers to this question reveal their resource preferences, level of expertise, and even their pain tolerance. Suppose they’re patching things together with duct tape and spreadsheets. Then it is a sign that there’s a clear opportunity to eventually offer a solution that might address the gaps or inefficiencies.
4. What would success look like for you?
I often ask this awareness stage question when I’m looking to shift the conversation toward their desired outcomes from focusing on the pain points. Once I know that, I try to understand what “good” looks like in their mind. I’ve seen that it makes it easier to position myself as someone who helps them achieve, not just fix at the right time.
5. Is there anything else I can do to help you right now?
I like to keep this question vague, as I prefer staying in educational mode during the awareness stage. I advocate asking it to let prospects know that you’re there to help and that they can ping you whenever they have questions.
Pro tip: Be careful here and keep things low-touch when you ask this to avoid a prospecting mistake. Remember, there’s a fine line between helpful and pushy, and the way you ask this question may blur it.
Consideration and Evaluation
By the time it is the consideration and evaluation stage, prospects better understand their pain points. This is the time when they’re most likely internally setting budgets and priorities. I take this as the prime time to get my foot in the door as the pain-point solver.
Some great questions I swear by at this time include:
6. Where are you in the budget-setting process? / Are you looking for proposed solutions now? / Is there a timeframe for finding a solution to your problem?
These are some of the classic BANT questions, and I reckon, you must aim to cover all elements.
Why? Many times, I’ve seen a prospect seem like a fantastic fit on paper, but not in reality. Reasons could be: They may not have the budget, their leadership isn’t considering vendors, and so on. So, ideally, you don’t want to waste too much time on such prospects. If you do, you can even risk souring your relationship by pushing them to act before they’re ready.
Remember, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want you to, and the most competent salespeople don’t try to.
7. What features or services are most important to you?
Since prospects generally weigh various options during consideration, I advocate asking this one to pin down what truly matters to them, and not what I think matters to them.
I’ve seen firsthand how transparency helps to better focus on the must-haves rather than spending time harping about the nice-to-haves they don’t care much about.
8. When do you need to achieve [X] goals by? When do you need to implement the solution by?
This is one of my go-to questions to personalize a sale. Whenever I’ve asked it, most prospects have answered “yesterday” to this one — and your prospects would perhaps say the same, too. Take my word for it: When you ask this, get such an answer and follow up correctly, that’s where the magic starts to happen.
When you ask, get specific with them about their process, goals, and timeline. What are they hoping to accomplish, and when must that happen? By personalizing the sale this way, you can get your prospect thinking about their purchase in terms of the benefits, how their specific pain points will be addressed, as opposed to things like features or price.
Pro tip: Remember, your product becomes valuable to customers when they start seeing benefits, not when they purchase it. So, focus on the solution, not the purchase; this move will make your product look more attractive.
Free Guide: 101 Sales Qualification Questions
101 Questions to Ask Contacts When Qualifying, Closing, Negotiating, and Upselling.
- Budget Questions
- Business Impact Questions
- Competitor Questions
- And More!
Download Free
All fields are required.
9. Have you considered other solutions or providers so far?
I’ve always found it helpful to know beforehand who (or what) I compete against. This buyer journey question is my shot at hearing that directly from the prospects.
If you ask this question, you will understand how seriously they’re shopping and whether they’re already leaning in any particular direction. This will guide you to go back to the right strategy deck to determine why your product is better than the ones they’re considering, where it falls short, and use it to tailor the conversation in your favor. I’ve saved a ton of time with this one!
10. What concerns do you have about moving forward with a solution?
I personally love this question, since it hits two targets with one stone. First, I’ve seen it surface any objections early. Knowing the obstacles at the right time makes them much easier to handle. Second, asking it also signals that you’re not just pushing a sale; you want them to feel confident in their decision.
11. How can I make this process easy for you?
This question offers an excellent avenue to show empathy and build trust. Asking it signals you’re not just there to close a deal but to truly partner with the buyer. I tend to ask this to appear empathetic and set myself apart from pushy, transactional sellers.
I normally acknowledge that buying isn’t always easy: There are approvals, paperwork, comparisons, and risks involved to connect with them better. In fact, nearly every time I’ve asked this question, I’ve seen the prospect share some hidden blockers, internal hurdles, or decision-making preferences that I might not have uncovered otherwise.
In my experience, it has also opened the door for collaboration. Sometimes, all they need is something as simple as a one-pager for their boss, a demo for their team, or just more time. By asking this question, I’ve been able to provide them that, build goodwill, and chalk out a roadmap to move the deal forward with less friction.
Decision and Purchase
Once you move past the awareness and consideration stage, you’ll know whether your product fits your prospect well. You’ll also probably understand what needs to happen for a deal to close. Now is the time to hold their hand and help them cross over, making them feel they’re in the driver’s seat. This is when you need to ask buyer journey questions like:
12. How are you doing?
I know what you might think: How could such a generic question do anything for you this late in the game? And as you can probably assume, this question isn’t some secret, magical, “hiding in plain sight” deal-sealer. In all honesty, I use this question to gauge my prospects’ trust in me, where I stand, and if I’m talking to the right person.
Buying a new product isn’t traumatic, but risks are still involved, right? Sales is the art of building trust within a tight window. How a prospect answers this tells me a lot about where I stand with them:
- If they say, “We’re behind,” I ask if I can do anything to speed up the process and appear helpful.
- If they say, “We’re on track, I brought it up to my boss, and we’re meeting about it on Friday,” I know things are going well.
- If they say, “Well…” or “I don’t know…”, it’s a sign there may be a problem.
- If they don’t want to tell me, it could mean that things aren’t going well and they don’t trust me.
- If they can’t tell me, it’s usually because they don’t know, which means I’m speaking with the wrong person.
13. Who else will be involved in the final decision?
Quite often, it so happens that the person we’re speaking with isn’t the ultimate decision-maker.
Research shows that 80% of deals in B2B sales require multiple decision-makers. Moreover, the average buying group has grown to include at least 10-11 stakeholders, and the final decisions require alignment from at least five key stakeholders.
In light of these facts, asking this question immediately lends perspective on who’s involved in the buying committee. I’ve seen firsthand how this can be a tremendous advantage in addressing everyone’s needs and concerns, and not just the person in front of me. So don’t skip this one.
14. Have you gone through a similar purchasing process before?
I swear by this question nearly every time. Why? It shows how much hand-holding and education there is left to do. If your prospect has undergone a similar process, you can expect to put in less legwork to get them to cross over. If they haven’t, the help you offer your prospect can make or break the sale.
I always offer to walk my prospects through a first-time decision-making process. After all, I’ve done this a million times and understand how to help get executive-level buy-in.
Pro tip: I occasionally offer a “Godfather.” By that, I mean a senior executive at the company who will check in with a customer once or twice a year to ensure things are going well. I’ve made this offer hundreds of times, and only a few customers have taken advantage of it. I’ve seen how simply offering this is often more valuable than the actual resource. Prospects start feeling that their risk is reduced if they know help is just a phone call away.
15. Is there anything holding you back from moving forward with us?
This is my bet to uncover hidden hesitations. Each time I’ve asked it, I’ve seen how it gives prospects the space to voice any last-minute fears or logistical blockers. The input gives me a final chance to address them before they stall.
Lead with curiosity, close with confidence.
Buyer journey questions have been among my most valuable pawns throughout my sales career. Asking the right questions has helped me open up honest conversations, uncover what prospects truly need, and build trust that closes deals, without feeling pushy or scripted.
In case you’re wondering, no, asking these questions won’t magically seal every deal. But take my word, they will give you insight, credibility, and momentum. In a world where buyers are more informed and skeptical than ever, trust me, that’s your competitive edge and path to success.
Stay curious, stay helpful, and stay focused on serving first. The results will surely follow.
Free Guide: 101 Sales Qualification Questions
101 Questions to Ask Contacts When Qualifying, Closing, Negotiating, and Upselling.
- Budget Questions
- Business Impact Questions
- Competitor Questions
- And More!
Download Free
All fields are required.
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