Great Question

I’m so glad you asked

A salesman was calling on me and asked what had to be the worst question I’ve ever heard in a pitch. After telling his story and answering my questions haltingly, he finally looked me in the eye and asked, “You don’t want to buy from me, do you?”

Um. No.

There are questions to ask and questions to avoid in any conversation and my hall-of-fame inquiry above is just one of many inappropriate inquiries that cross my desk in a week. Usually, the problem isn’t that the question is off-putting, but that it is ineffective. Bad questions, as described in last week’s post, simply fail to elicit meaningful responses.

Good questions generate honest, insightful answers. Great questions generate honest, insightful answers that fulfill the goals of the inquirer. I learned that lesson by trial and error as a newspaper reporter many years ago and the rules haven’t changed since then.

How do you ask questions that obtain wisdom in addition to data points? Herewith, a few highlights of our interviewing approach at Quadrant Five:

• Lead off with a warm-up question. Ease the transition from whatever the respondent was doing before she picked up the phone, so she is more focused on your issues when the really critical questions come up.
• Ask open-ended questions. Give the respondent a chance to tell you what he’s thinking about rather than simply providing a data point.
• Don’t lead the witness. Questions that suggest a specific type of response will skew the results, with insight as the first victim.
• Make it about them. Asking about the customer’s needs or plans will provide clues about hot button issues, while questions about your company might make them overly focused on what they are buying or doing today.
• Listen. Every answer raises another question. Simple follow-up questions like, “what do you mean by that” or “how does that influence your choice,” can lead to major insights, but only if we’re listening carefully enough to know what comes next.

There’s much more, of course, but you get the idea. If you want the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.

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