Tuesday Tips

You are very clever.

But you are not particularly clever about what’s going on inside someone else’s head.

So you need to ask questions, to find out.

And the more you understand what drives them, the more you can tailor what you say/ do to impress them.

And the best question to ask?

The second one.

For example, let’s say your first question was “What’s your #1 priority?”

And they replied with “To make sales in Belgium.”

It’d be easy to hear the “Belgium”, think that’s their #1 priority, and base everything you say/do on that.

But, when you ask second questions, you find what is behind their response.

My favourite second question is “Tell me more?”

Ask this, and people usually tell you more!

There are many other second questions – and they tend to begin with the typical question words – why, who, when. For example:

• Why is that so important?
• When do you need that by?
• Who else do we need to impress?
• What has to happen, for us to impress them?
• How do you want to achieve this?
• Why have we not done this before?
• What if we didn’t do this?
• What if we didn’t do this, but our competitors did?

And so on.

Ask all these questions in my Belgium example, and you might discover lots more…

They want to make sales in Belgium, because this is where their research shows the new lucrative market is. But they currently make all their sales in this country. And this country’s market collapsed overnight…

You now know that “Belgium” isn’t their #1 priority. Instead, it’s staying in business.

Much more urgent.

And much easier to persuade them to take urgent action as a result.

The simple rule with questioning is this:

     First questions get them talking.
     But second questions get the value.

Are you asking enough of them?

Tell me more…

Action Point

Create a list of second questions you can ask. Or don’t; and just copy mine from above. The more you ask these, the more you’ll find out.