Active Questioning

Your questions can lead you down only one of two paths. The first is a high-return, fast-paced path. It uncovers unknowns of customers' goals, filters, measurable benefits, and SOEs. The second is a low-return, slow-motion path. It seeks answers to how much customers know about the features and benefits of your products. The principles behind active questioning help you to stay on the first path and avoid the second. (See Exhibit 5-2.)

Exhibit 5-2: You choose where your questions lead you.

The Strategy Behind Active Questioning

Active questioning is really an old saying in disguise. Seek to understand before you seek to be understood. Make sure you understand how customers' specific comments affect their ability to achieve their goals before responding to them. Often, you and customers find out they do not. The fundamental strategy behind active questioning is the Safety Zone concept. It empowers you to Go For Measurable Specifics (goals, filters, measurable benefits, and systems of evaluations) so customers view you as an industry expert.

Safety Zone

Customers want to share information because it makes good business sense to do so. When you ask questions that customers would want to ask themselves, it decreases uncertainty and the risks of wasted efforts and unfulfilled goals for them, too. However, for customers, disclosing information must be risk-free and not weaken their negotiating position while strengthening yours. As Chapter 3 demonstrated, only one place exists where customers know they are risk free and in control—their measurable goals. Customers know that without their consent, their well-defined destinations are not easily changed. They relax because they are in control. Therefore, relate your questions to their goals. The more measurable the goals, the bigger you make the Safety Zones. Like heat-seeking missiles, let your goal-seeking questions fire away. No one will get hurt— other than competitors and time robbers.

Note

You must make a decision before you conduct a sales call. You must decide whether you are there to gather measurable details or product posture at the first opportunity. If you try to do both, you lose credibility as being customer focused rather than product focused. Once that happens, customers will no longer share details about their goals and filters for the reasons stated above.

The Power of How's Zat?

The Safety Zone strategy revolves around the most powerful words in your sales vocabulary: How's Zat? You use them to understand "How does that customer's response affect his or her goals?" The phonetic term How's Zat? also includes how, why, and all the other forms of the open-ended questions discussed later in this chapter. Use them as the first words to start a follow-up question to reference customers' responses on how they think their comments affect their ability to achieve goals.

Example

Vince Higgins, the president of a small recruiting company, tells salesperson Paul Leonard, who sells a prospecting training program, that his goal is to increase his salespeople's efficiency. Vince then tells Paul that he sends his staff to a competitor's training program once a year. Just what Paul wanted to hear, right? No problem. Paul uses the Safety Zone and How's Zat? strategies to understand how Vince's comment affects his ability to achieve his goal. He does so without falling into the "what do they do for you?" trap.

• Vince: I send my staff to the Got-There-First training program. (This is a specific comment concerning the filters of current situation and alternative.)

• Paul: How do you feel training programs in general help you improve efficiency?

Paul's question motivates Vince to think about how training programs in general (not competitors' specific ones) relate to his goal and safety zone of improving efficiency.

The Tactics Behind Active Questioning

You know all the tactics. For the most part, they are common sense. Nevertheless, often during sales calls, a product focus makes salespeople forget these tactics, so these reminders should prove helpful.

Follow the Customer's Lead

Customers want to take the lead in discussions. It gives them a further sense of control. Let them lead, while you address the topics they bring up. Their responses tell you which questions to ask next. You know exactly what to ask, without guesswork or fishing expeditions.

Your follow-up questions should seek to make crystal clear their goals, filters, measurable benefits, and SOEs. Again, obtaining measurable specifics is the only concrete way to understand how customers define value and how your products generate value. In addition, fighting for control does not make you more productive or successful; so why waste your time. As mentioned before, following their lead lets customers know you are receiving and understanding their messages. The reward is that customers supply plenty of details.

Finally, when you follow the customer's lead, your questions motivate the customer to pull you to the next goal or filter. You are not the first one to bring up a new goal or filter, the customer is. Again, his or her sense of control benefits you.

Example

• Customer: I need to get approval on any purchase over $50,000. (Customer discloses filter of funding specifics.)

• Salesperson: Who needs to approve a purchase over that amount? (Answer about funding filter leads into decision maker's filter.)

Ask Specific but Open-Ended Questions

Give customers the opportunity to tell you everything they know—at least, everything they know about their goals, filters, measurable benefits, and SOEs. Open-ended questions accomplish that for you. They let customers tell you a lot of things you do not know. Open-ended questions start with words such as who, what, why, when, where, and how. One word of caution: An open-ended question that does not reference a goal or filter could spell trouble. In the mouths of long-winded customers, they could end up as lengthy monologues about nothing (like most Seinfeld episodes). Avoid questions that are no more specific than "How do you feel about life in general?" However, do not take the other extreme and box customers in either.

Yes-or-no questions box in customers and force them to select their answers from limited choices, so they only provide limited information. Customers do not have much incentive to add information. For instance, yes-or-no questions usually result in only yes or no answers. These questions also require playing a game of hit or miss to everyone's discomfort.

They can sound more like guesses or stabs in the dark than questions. "Can you see where you can save money?" "No." "Well, how about saving time?" "No." You will find that getting three consecutive no answers is usually fatal to the sales call. Your sales call just went from collaborative to confrontational as you hope your next question brings a positive response. Customers who ask, "What part of 'no' did you not understand?" probably should not be considered ideal prospects. A no answer causes a fight for control over where the sales call goes next. Do you now see why customers view these questions as controlling? Just answer yes or no.

Note

They do have their purpose. You use a yes-or-no question to confirm how customers measure their goals or filters.

Example of Using a Yes-or-No Question

• Salesperson: Larry, is improving cash flow important to you?

• Customer: No (You now have to throw out another yes-or-no question and hope you do not end up with another no. Otherwise, it is two down, one to go.)

Example of Using an Open-Ended Question

• Salesperson: Larry, as head of accounting of a hospital, what are some of your most important priorities? (The answer helps the salesperson learn about how the customer's position affects his goals.)

Note

In the previous example, the salesperson would review a Market Profile sheet, so he would know what priorities (goals) accounting managers of hospitals have if Larry did not know what the salesperson meant by "priorities."

No Loose Ends

You keep building momentum in your sales calls by ensuring that each goal or filter is measurable before pursuing the next one. When you need to return to previously discussed goals and filters to gather missed measurements, it slows your forward progress. It is like stopping at a gas station and only filling up the tank halfway to save time. Eventually you are going to waste more time having to stop twice as often. Making sure you have a full tank of measurable goals and filters speeds up your progress in determining if customers' goals are achievable.

Example

• Customer: Our target is to reduce our current inventory by $800,000.

• Salesperson: So, is your goal to lower your current inventory from $2,500,000 to $1,700,000? (Uses a yes-or-no question to confirm how the customer measures goals or filters.)

• Customer: Yes

• Salesperson: What other inventory goals have you set? (Salesperson starts pursuing other goals now that the inventory goal is measurable.)

Note

As outlined in "Ask Specific but Open-Ended Questions," make sure you have accurate and measurable information— before you ask customers to commit to yes-or-no answers. In addition, you build momentum by linking customers' measurable answers to the next filter or goal that you seek specifics on. The two case studies in Chapter 6 examine "linking" in detail.

Don't Shoot Yourself

If someone shoots at you and misses, you do not hand him more bullets when he runs out. Yet, when you agree with negative statements made by customers, that is exactly what you are doing. The only difference is that one kills people; the other kills sales calls. Do not tell customers you too think something is a negative until both parties understand how it affects achieving the customers' goals. Then, if you are unable to help them achieve their goals, let them know why, and do so before they let you know why. Hitting issues head-on is another way you turn negatives into positives and build credibility and trust with customers.

Example of Confirming a Negative

• Customer: Jackie, your price seems expensive.

• Salesperson: Tom, why do you think we're expensive? (Nothing like asking your customers to enumerate the reasons why they think your product is expensive, which most people consider a negative term.)

• Customer: Your price is $5,000 more than your competitors.

Example of Not Confirming a Negative

• Customer: Jackie, your price seems expensive.

• Salesperson: Tom, how are you evaluating price? (The salesperson does not agree her product is expensive, but instead puts the focus on how Tom evaluates price. With either question Jackie has a platform to bring up other value considerations (SOEs) involved with evaluating price, such as life-cycle costs. However, Jackie will not be implying that she too thinks her price is expensive with her "evaluating price" question.)

Think Positively

When you make assumptions, you usually make negative ones. Most of us learn early in life to assume the worst: "I bet he wants me to lower my price." If you are going to make assumptions, you can just as easily make positive ones: "I bet he wants me to cost-justify the price." Assumptions do not require proof, so make them benefit you and assume your customers prove you right, not wrong.

Example of a Negative Assumption

• Salesperson: Mary, you mentioned before that sometimes you have to go out for public bids. Will this have to go out to public bid? (He assumes the worst using a closed-ended question, rather than assuming he could negotiate the sale.)

• Customer: Yes. (Boxed-in customer gets the chance to agree with a negative assumption.)

Example of a Positive Assumption

• Salesperson: Mary, you mentioned before that sometimes you have to go out for public bids. What is involved with bypassing the bid process to make sure you achieve your goal of increased efficiency? (The salesperson makes a positive assumption and references her goal or safety zone.)

No Echoes

Depending on who is counting, the English language has more than 3 million words. These words provide a plethora of choices to show off your originality. In addition, when you rephrase—and do not merely parrot customers' responses—it shows you have thought about what they said. That fact alone encourages customers to continue to share information. Rephrasing is easy if you use the Safety Zone strategy and rephrase their comments in terms of how they affect their goals.

Example of Echoing

• Customer: Our computer system never works properly.

• Salesperson: What makes you think your computer system never works properly? (A good question, but it is a little light on originality.)

Example of Rephrasing

• Customer: Our computer system never works properly.

• Salesperson: What makes you think your computer system is less than adequate?