Kim Michael Published 2009 The American Salesman
So what is the single most powerful force in the universe of man? What has the power to move mountains? Change the course of mighty rivers? Create vast cities, or even reach beyond the farthest stars?
Taking out everyone’s automatic default answer of “God,” what are you left with? If your answer is the power of human thought, as intuitive as that answer may be, you would still be wrong.
“Thought” by virtue of its very nature is only a vehicle. Its components: knowledge--which is the accumulation of what we know, and wisdom--how we use what we know, are really nothing without the one key that unlocks the power that is within them.
Einstein once said ”If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it I would use the first 55 minutes to formulate the right question because as soon as I had identified the right question, I knew I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
Yes, the answer so fundamental in it’s simplicity that it is easily overlooked, is in fact, the power of a “question”. Every sales person knows the value of communication and listening in the sales process. Asking questions is probably the most fundamental component of any interactive communication and yet, like walking, it is not something that we learn through disciplined methodology, we just do it. But like so many skills that we merely acquire, the only way that we can truly understand and improve it is to step back, forget that it is something that we’ve done all our lives and see it as if we are looking at it for the first time. Only then can we see and appreciate the amazing power that a question can have.
Questions define what we know and understand. A universe of questions can exist without answers, but no answer, not one, can exist without a question. They create the pathways of illumination and discovery that allow us to move forward. The very process of asking a question focuses all one’s knowledge, all one’s wisdom in one direction, in a regiment of analysis and discovery that is unique and singular to the pursuit of a specific truth. The greatest advances in human history all began with simple questions; “What if?” “How?” “Why?”
A friend of mine who is a noted Professor at the University of Syracuse, and one of the country’s foremost experts in Advanced Statistical Analysis, once told me; “The creative mind without the discipline of methodology accomplishes little.” He made the comment while trying to explain to me the context of his “other” job. In addition to his rigorous teaching, writing and lecture schedule (his day job), he shared with me that the U.S. government actually flies him around the country to work with various “think tanks.”
That doesn’t mean to say that he knows, or even understands, everything they do, but what he gives them is a methodology that makes it possible for them to find the answers they might not otherwise have found. And the tools he uses to do this? He develops a series of questions that when asked, create a very concise pathway for them to follow.
So what does this have to do with you and me? Success in life, success in business, really success in everything, hinges on our ability to ask questions and find answers, but not just any questions—as Einstein put it, it has to be the “right” questions.
We live in times of extraordinary economic upheaval, banks failing, major industries on the brink of collapse. The truth of it is, it didn’t just happen. The seeds of these disasters were sown months ago; years ago; perhaps even decades ago. But the reason why it all happened, and continues to happen, is simple. In each instance there was a moment, an intersection, where that individual or company could go right instead of left. And at that precise moment, the one critical question, the “right” question, was never asked. The true relevance to our understanding in this case is not so much what that question actually was, or is, but rather, why it was never asked?
If there is a “dark side” in learning to ask the “right” questions, this is it. Sometimes it’s about asking the really “hard” questions; the ones no one wants to ask; the ones we can only ask when our defenses are down and we are searching for the cold, hard, brutal truth. These are the questions that we avoid because they don’t tell us what we “want” to hear. It is easy to knowingly, or unknowingly, to bias a response, but in so doing we can skew an answer in directions that might otherwise have allowed us to make a better decision.
How many companies have gone down in flames simply because they didn’t ask the hard and painfully honest questions? Is this really working? What can I do differently? What if? Often times it takes as much courage as it does skill, to ask the kinds of questions that are truly meaningful.
To be truly effective questions need detailed qualifiers and quantifiers so they produce the right outcome. Often a small, overlooked detail can change dramatically the entire tenor of a question and with it, the consequence of an unanticipated outcome—a case in point.
For many years it was a closely guarded secret that at the outset of the space race, the first Redstone rocket developed and launched in Huntsville, Alabama (before there was a Cape Canaveral) actually blew up on the launching pad. The event, if publicly known, would have had a damaging effect on what was the infancy of our space program and so it was kept quiet until they had enough time to find out what had happened. The culprit? A single comma had been omitted in one of the initial propulsion programs.
Now in this case it was not a faulty question that caused the unexpected outcome, but it is worth mentioning only because it demonstrates that in these times of advanced and extraordinary technology our search for answers must also be exacting and precise.
So how do the “right” questions affect the sales process? Questions are intricate tools, and when you begin to think of them and use them as such, you begin to learn how to unlock the power that they can wield.
A close friend who is one of the most talented and successful salespeople I have ever met once told me, “Most sales people spend too much time trying to perfect what they want to tell potential clients and not nearly enough time perfecting the questions they need to ask?”
Religiously before every meeting she said she would outline all the questions she wanted to ask, ranking them by the importance of their answers. Then she would make a second list of all the questions she knew they would ask her, making sure that her answers were short, concise, and always focused in the direction she wanted to go. She controlled the flow of the meeting by using questions, not only as a means of information gathering, but as a discovery method, a way of helping her potential clients discover for themselves why they should do business with her.
She said that she could even stop the most intense argument, or disagreement, simply by asking a question. It seems even the most accomplished multi-tasker can not argue and answer a question at the same time.
Building an Effective Question
Constructing an effective question is much like what a mechanical engineer does when designing a machine. Initially he or she must decide in detail what they want the machine to do. Then they design the components around the outcome.
Creating an effective question is much the same process. You must first decide what kind of answer you want. All too often the demise of a good question is that it is not focused to give you the answer you need. The evidence of this is in using the ultimate questionary tool—the internet. How many times have you typed in a question only to find you’ve gotten thousands of responses?
That same demise happens in the questions we ask everyday, but because we don’t have the immediate response of thousands of answers, we fail to realize the faultiness of the question we’ve asked. A good example, “How can I be more successful?” There are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of answers, and like using the internet only a few are of any value. What we often mistake for a “specific” question is really a “category” question (questions resulting in multiple answers because they lack qualifiers and quantifiers to narrow the response). Qualifiers are used to chip away the parts of answers that we don’t need and quantifiers limit the scope.
The better question would be, “What can I do right now that will have an immediate impact?” Now you’ve limited the scope to situations that are real and already in existence, secondly you’ve assigned a timeframe--“now”. The question has gone from a question that could have been both philosophical and concrete to one that is solely concrete and actionable.
Sometimes a question can be too specific, especially if you are trying to create multiple options. By limiting the qualifiers and quantifiers you broaden the scope to create more than one option.
Basic sales 101 teaches us that all questions fall into two main Headings; “Open Probes” and “Closed Probes”. Open Probes are considered “exploratory” tools, meaning their responses requires dialogue rather than a simple “yes” or “no”. There are many different types of “open” questions, the most prominent being:
1. Category Questions--Questions that create multiple options or answers.
2. Specific Questions--Questions that focus on only a few or only one answer.
3. Philosophical Questions--Questions that are subjective to the person who is answering.
4. Concrete Questions—Questions whose answers are detailed and actionable.
5. Discovery Questions--Questions whose answers are already known by the asker and are used to lead a conversation in a specific direction. This is used many times by attorneys, but the critical (and tricky) component of such a question is, “never ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to”.
As you probably suspect by now there are many complexities and nuances in learning to construct the “right” question. Whether it’s seeking to understand elements that were once beyond our grasp, or simply breaking us out of the monotony of mindless routine. To be truly successful in all aspects of life we have to constantly ask the questions that challenge us, that inspire us, that open us to new possibilities and allow us to reach beyond the safety of our own comfort zones. When we learn to craft these questions properly and effectively, that is when we hold the key that truly unlocks the universe.
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