4 Excellent Signage Sales Questions

What is the first question you ask when you receive a signage sales inquiry?

Is it “what kind of a sign are you looking for?” Or maybe “when can I drive out to check out your site?”

Those aren’t bad questions. But you can ask better ones. Questions that help you to quickly determine if this inquiry has a good chance of resulting in a sale, and how much of a sale may be involved. Since we sell only wholesale channel letters, we often ask filtering questions such as these.

Here is one of those questions:

“Why did you decide to buy signage now?”

The answer to that question can be a real eye-opener, and can quickly clue you in to what sales might be made here. For example, if they answer “well, this is a franchised business, and the franchisor site development plan says we need to install channel letters at this point in the construction.”

Good to know. That means the signage for their location is probably already designed, and the production files will probably be ready to go as well. You also know this could be a multiple-sign sale.

Here is another good inquiry question – this one assumes the prospect said “we need another sign on our building.”

“How did you choose your current signage?”

That question helps you “peek under the covers” for their original decision making process, and will also give you an idea of who makes the decisions at this company.

Or, suppose you hear this from an inquiry: “We want to make this location easier to find, so we want an additional sign.”

Then, what is your follow up question? How about:

“OK, I’m sure that’s true that you want your location to be easier to find, but how did you decide that an additional sign was the way to do that?”

Again, the answer to that question can yield some useful information. For example, the prospect might say, “well, a friend of mine had the same problem with his business, and he said adding another sign really helped. In fact, I’d like for my new sign to be the same type as his. I have a picture of the sign he got if you’d like to see it.”

Isn’t that good to know? Then you know much more about the type of sale this could be, and whether you would be able to help this customer. The prospect’s answer also may keep you from wasting time – he may be looking for a type of sign you don’t handle.

Here is another good one:

“How are you going to decide which signage proposal you’ll accept?”

The answer will tell you their priorities. If they say “well, we want a reasonable price, but we are mostly concerned about quality. We want this sign to last for a long time, so quality is our main priority.”

What happens then? You know your proposal had better stress product quality. Your competitor may not know that, so you have an advantage from the beginning.

So keep on asking questions when you receive an inquiry – they can give your proposals a “leg up” on the competition.