Friendly Fire
Asking the hard questions
A lifetime ago, in the middle of a drug cartel trial in Hammond, Indiana, a defense attorney threatened to put me on the witness stand and started coaching me about my testimony. When I objected to being coached about my answers, he told me what every litigator knows: never ask a question unless you know what the answer is going to be.
That’s good advice when preparing for trial, including the trials of business. Preparation, rehearsal and focus groups are all good tools for anticipating—and ensuring—that we will get the answers we seek.
Too frequently, we charge ahead with an idea we like, without testing it to make sure the audience will like it as much. The cost of our self-assurance is lost sales, misdirected initiatives and stifled growth.
The alternative is relatively simple. Ask customers before making the sales call and use their insights to create better presentations. If we can anticipate that a customer’s response will be negative, we might decide to skip a specific question. If we learn that the response is more likely to be positive, we can shift our field of inquiry. If we could find the set of questions most likely to prove our case, what possible reason would we have for skipping this preparation step.
I never ended up on the witness stand in Hammond, but I’m creating a transcript every day. We all do. Asking for a copy of that transcript can be unnerving, but we almost always benefit from the experience.
About Michael Rosenbaum
Quadrant Five founder Michael Rosenbaum has walked the walk when it comes to building a business, so he can be a confidant and compatriot—not just an advisor—for clients. Rosenbaum worked his way up to president of a $35 million company with 300 people and 600 clients. Along the way, he managed operations, HR, IT, and marketing, and advised CEOS and CFOs at more than 200 companies.
Beginning as a newspaper reporter, he developed a specialization in business journalism and earned an MBA on his way to a 30-year consulting career. Representing both angel-backed startups and Fortune 100 giants, Rosenbaum identified the patterns and processes that drive success across a wide range of industries and business cycles.
He is well regarded for designing each performance-improvement process around specific client needs, capabilities, and culture, rather than pushing a pre-fab set of rules for clients to follow. He brings a unique set of skills to each engagement, including experiences as a company president, financial journalist, marketer, IR advisor, non-profit founder, author, and public speaker. Items of note include:
• Received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 2015 for non-profit work
• Honored for the Best Business Biography of 2012 for his fifth book, Six Tires, No Plan
• Frequent speaker on customer relationship value
• Sales instructor for Certified Value Growth Advisor certification program.
• Regional Communications Chair, YPO Gold
• Marketing Chair, AMAA’s Mid-Market Alliance
• Former Chicago Chapter Chair, National Association of Corporate Directors
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