Tuesday Tips

Here’s something brilliant conversationalists do:

• Ask a great trigger question, to start the conversation
• Ask great follow-up questions, to get to the value

For example, if you ask the trigger question “How soon would you like to start?”, the only possible answers are:

1. Soon
2. Not soon
3. Don’t know
4. Don’t care

You’d then choose your follow-up question, depending which answer they give:

1. Great! We can start next week. Ok?
2. That’s fine. We can delay our start. But can I just check something? I could start as early as next week. Is there any reason we can’t start then?
3. Ok. It’s best to choose a potential kick-off date – after all, we can delay nearer the time if we want. When shall we have – next week? The week after?
4. Ok. Well, we could start next week, or the week after. Which do you prefer?

So, if you want to be even better at chatting, prepare great trigger questions, and also prepare follow/up questions to the different answers they could give to your trigger.

If you’re naturally good at this, you won’t need this Tip.

But if you sometimes feel conversations drag. Or that you do most of the talking. Or you worry about asking questions because of how they might respond – well, this Tip’s perfect for you. Because all you need to do is…

Action Point

Prepare great trigger questions. Then, identify the likely responses – and prepare great follow-up questions to each.