If you're not willing to dig in and ask a few questions of your prospects, it's easy to get things misaligned. If you don't have the guts to ask questions up front, you can end up in a very bad situation.
A couple years back, we had an email blast go out to our database about our Strategic Customer Care program. That day, I got a call from someone.
"Hey," he said, "I want to sign a couple people up."
"Great," I replied. "Is it okay if we make sure we're on the same page before I get your credit card information?"
"Absolutely," he responded.
"So you want to sign two people up for the Sandler Strategic Customer Care program, correct?"
"That's right," he said.
"That's 12 weeks, 2 hours a week. It's $2,400 a person."
There was dead silence on the phone. "Are you there?" I asked.
He responded, "Wow, that's not what I thought it would be. I thought it was $80 a person."
I could hear him typing away on his keyboard. "Whoops," he finally said. "It wasn't Sandler."
He shared with me that it was a program offered through a different organization that I'm familiar with. It was for several weeks of customer service training, and it really was just $80 a person.
"I'm going to guess we're done talking," I said. "Is that right?"
He sighed. "Yeah, there's no way we can afford $2,400 a person."
"Well," I continued, "now that it's over, can I ask a question?"
"Sure."
"So you sent all your people through the $80 class before. Why are we talking if they've already been through the training?"
"It absolutely sucked," he responded. "It wasn't even worth the $80."
"I'm lost here," I replied, flabbergasted. "Why did you call me if you thought it was the same thing, but it wasn't worth the $80?"
"For $80, I figured I couldn't go wrong. Our people are horrible, so anything is better than nothing."
What would have happened if I hadn't asked some tough questions in that situation? Can you imagine the look on his face if he got a bill for $4,800, and he was expecting $160?
That's a great example of how badly things can get disconnected if you don't have the guts to ask questions up front.
