You will be able to order questions from broad context to specific detail so the buyer never feels interrogated.
Think of a form you filled in recently, for a bank account, a clinic or a new phone plan. Name, NRIC, address, monthly income, employer, number of dependants. Each question is reasonable on its own. Together they feel faintly intrusive, because nobody explained why they wanted any of it, and the most personal questions came before you had any reason to answer them.
A discovery meeting can feel exactly the same, even when every question is a good one. The difference between a conversation and a form is mostly order. This lesson gives you a shape for ordering questions, the question funnel: a sequence that starts wide, with how things work today, and narrows to what is not working and why.
The top of the funnel is about the buyer's current situation in general terms. How things work today, who is involved, what they have tried. These questions are easy to answer and low risk. They let the buyer settle in and talk about something they know well.
The middle of the funnel narrows to what is not working. Where does it go wrong, how often, what is frustrating. By now the buyer has been talking for a few minutes and is more willing to describe problems.
The bottom of the funnel is the specific detail: the cause, the effect and the cost, the layers you met in lesson 2.1, Open, layered and follow-up questions. This is where you ask for numbers and examples.
Here is one funnel from Wei Ling's meeting with Marcus, the newly married engineer from that lesson.
Wide: "Tell me how money works between you and your wife at the moment."
Narrowing: "Which part of that works least well?"
Specific: "The last time a bill went wrong, what happened?" and "How long since you last put money aside for something?"
Specific questions too early feel like a form. If Wei Ling opened with "what's your take-home pay and your wife's?" Marcus would answer, but warily, and he would start to wonder what she was going to sell him. The same question twenty minutes later, after he has described three accounts and a bounced loan payment, feels like a natural next step. It is the same question with a different place in the order.
Specific questions too late have the opposite problem. Some sellers are so wary of seeming pushy that they stay at the top of the funnel for the whole meeting. The buyer has a pleasant chat, and the seller leaves without a single number, example or date. You cannot write a proposal from "things are a bit messy." If you get to the last ten minutes without any specific detail, you left it too late.
A rough test while you are in the meeting: after about a third of your time, you should have narrowed into at least one problem. If you are still asking about general background, move down.
When you reach the bottom of a funnel, stop and say back what you heard before opening the next topic. Lesson 3.3 of Sales foundations, Summarise back what you heard, explained why summaries work. Here they also act as a door between topics.
Wei Ling closes the first funnel like this: "So, three accounts, no fixed plan for which bills come from where, one missed loan payment last month, and nothing saved since the wedding. Have I got that right?" Marcus adds that his wife wants to start a fund for a future child. Wei Ling writes it down, then opens the next funnel: "Can we talk about protection next? Tell me what cover you each have at the moment."
The summary does three jobs. It confirms you understood, it often draws out one more fact, and it tells the buyer clearly that one topic has ended and another is starting. Without it, topic changes feel abrupt, and abrupt changes are part of what makes a meeting feel like an interrogation.
Two or three funnels fill a typical discovery meeting of forty-five minutes to an hour. Each funnel takes ten to twenty minutes if you go down properly. Trying to fit five topics usually means none of them reaches the bottom.
So choose your funnels before the meeting. Your hypotheses from lesson 1.2, Prepare a hypothesis, not a pitch, tell you which topics are likely to matter. For Wei Ling, the three funnels for Marcus might be: how money works day to day, what protection they already have, and what they want to save for. A bookkeeper meeting a cafe owner might choose month-end records, cash handling between outlets, and the relationship with the accountant.
If the buyer opens a topic you did not plan, and it matters to them, follow it. A planned funnel is there to give you a shape. You do not have to finish it.
A funnel plan is short. For each topic, write one wide question, one or two narrowing questions, two or three specific ones, and the first words of your summary line. That gives you around six or seven questions per funnel and roughly twenty for the whole meeting, which is plenty, because most of what you ask will be follow-ups you cannot plan.
Pick the meeting you are preparing for next, choose its three topics from your hypotheses, and keep them in front of you as you start the activity below.
Plan a three-funnel question sequence for your next meeting, with a summary line written at the end of each funnel.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).