Women-Winning Questions – Ask These Questions, Close More Sales

What’s the secret to attracting, retaining and getting more business from your female customers?

Ask better questions.

How does asking better questions help grow your credit union?  When you ask better questions, you:

• Increase customer engagement
• Identify new cross-selling opportunities
• Create marketing material that is relevant and persuasive
• Build trust and loyalty

Why is this especially important with women?   Women are looking for financial companies who   understand them, their needs and their lives.    They want to work with financial professionals who take a genuine interest in them.

Women-winning questions

Here are a few examples of women-winning questions and how they are better than the questions you may be asking now.

Standard greeting:    “How are you today?”

Answer:   “Fine.”

Women-winning question:    “What’s been happening in your world?  Any big occasions or decisions coming up?”

Answer:  “My daughter just graduated from high school.   So I’ve been focused on helping her get ready for college.”

Women-winning questions are designed to elicit better, richer, more detailed answers.    In the above example, the first answer, “Fine” gets you nothing, nada, zip.   But the second answer could help you identify several opportunities.   Does the daughter need a car for college (auto loan)? Where is the daughter going to school (new checking accounts, credit cards)?

Women-winning questions are also designed to focus on what your customer wants to talk about.

Standard question:   “What are your retirement goals?  How much money would you need?”

Answer:  “Well, um…….I’d like to be able to retire some day….to travel.  How much money would I need?”  (Thinking to herself, “how on earth am I supposed to know that?”)

Women winning questions:   “What does being financially OK look like to you?” and “What do you NOT want to happen?”

Answers:  “Well, I’d have my home and car paid off.   I wouldn’t have any credit card debt.   I wouldn’t need an extravagant lifestyle, but I’d like to make sure I can easily cover my monthly expenses.  And I’d want enough money so I could take a vacation every year.”  “My biggest fear is I’d have to move in with my kids.  They shouldn’t have to be responsible for me.  I’d never want to be a burden to them.”

Again, notice the quality and depth of the answers to the women-winning questions.   You have more and better information to help your customer and point her to products and services that are most relevant to her needs.   NOTE:  It’s important to ask about goals, but uncover her concerns as well as her aspirations.

Asking better questions and really listening to the answers is a concrete way to create more customer engagement.

As an added bonus, these questions can help you create better marketing materials.    For example, a question women ask themselves is, “How can I raise money-smart kids?”  If you are promoting savings accounts, a marketing piece could have that question as the headline.   The rest of the piece could talk about the importance of helping your kids budget and save for a goal.

Ask women-winning questions to get better answers, create more engagement and provide more relevant products and services to your customers.