Tweet

Open, Leading and Closed Questions

Written by: Nikki Owen

Article Overview: In a selling environment where most good sales people appreciate the importance of discovering a prospect’s requirements, it is easy to take questioning skills for granted. Yet, questions that are crafted with strategic intent can uncover a myriad of secrets stored in the prospect’s mind.

Open, Leading and Closed Questions

A typical trap that even the most experienced sales person can fall into, is that they make assumptions, either based on hard facts, possible facts or generalisations they’ve formed about their industry, prospects and themselves. Good questions seek to challenge and test assumptions so that the sales person’s mind and the mind of their prospect/customer is free to think clearly and consequently to provide the relevant information. Before you can start to ask questions designed to uncover specifics, it’s important to give the prospect the opportunity to talk. The more they talk, the more signposts you’ll receive that will help lead the way to your desired outcome. Therefore, it helps to understand the definition and the positioning of different question types:

Open Questions
For example: "How can we help?"
● good for opening up the customer and getting broad, general, information that is uninfluenced by you
● gives the customer the freedom to tell you whatever they want
● tend to start with what, when, where, why, who, which or how

Leading Questions
For example: "What else can you tell me about your delivery requirements?"
● good for leading the customer in the direction you want them to go and finding out more specific information about their requirements
● tend to start with what, when, where, why, who, which or how

Closed Questions
For example: "Do you want to order this?"
● usually get a “yes” or “no” (or very short) answer
● useful when you want to pinpoint/clarify specific information

The type of questions you ask customers can generate an uninfluenced or an influenced response. Open questions tend to give you longer, uninfluenced answers that allow you to begin to appreciate what’s important to a customer. Leading questions are still open questions yet they influence customers’ responses around specific areas.

The Open, Leading and Closed Combination
Open questions »»» uninfluenced customer response »»» leading questions »»» influences customer response »»» closed question »»» validation of customer response

The example below illustrates the ideal combination of using open, leading and closed questions to pinpoint a customer’s specific requirements:

Sales person: “What’s important to you?” (Open question)

Customer: “Price, quality and efficiency.” (Uninfluenced response)

Sales person: “Why is price important to you?” (Leading question based on price)

Customer: “So I can be more competitive in winning new business.” (Influenced response based on price related question)

Sales person: “If I can demonstrate how we can help you win more business, will you review our proposition?” (Closed question to gain agreement)

Customer: “Yes” (influenced, definite response)

Related Articles
  Can You Use Closed Questions to Sell More Insurance?
  Are you boring prospects with your questions?
  Can I help you?
  The Art of Changing Your Subconscious Mind: How to Ask The Right Creation Question
  The Art of Receiving Clarity: How to Ask The Right Creation Question

Article Tags: assumptions, closed questions, customer response, delivery requirements, desired outcome, experienced sales, freedom, industry prospects, question types, sales person, short answer, signposts, specifics



Related Forum Posts
Re: How to Promote a MLM Business? - I have to agree with several of the previous posts here. Having your own site so that you can get it ranked is a big one. Also, as stated above, using a "passive" recruiting style works really well. Leading by example, people will naturally want to follow you over time if you prove yourself a leader. Bottom line, if you are promoting your opportunity or products, you are losing sales. About 85% of the population hates to be sold. Promote YOU, build relationships and let the business fall in place after that. Bill
Re: High price of entertainment - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":dadh8m1p]Kevin, I went to a Justin Timberlake concert recently where the bottled water was selling for $4 a bottle! I'm talking about the average 600ml bottle that sells for about $1.20 in the supermarket, now that's a rip off but people were buying it because they needed water.[/quote:dadh8m1p] Hi TheAnonymousMan, Can I ask how much you paid for the concert tickets? And more importantly, was the show worth the price? At the Tennis US Open, I had to pay $3.25 for a 500ml bottled water, $8.00 for a "travel size" Hawaiian Tropic bottle of sunscreen, and $13.00 for a Carnegie Deli pastrami sandwich, $4.25 for fries and $2.77 for a Sharpie pen (for autographs), etc... And to make things worse, they don't allow you to carry a backpack for security reasons, so it's very inconvenient to bring your own things to the event (keep in mind I was at the US Open for 7 hours). I mean who wants to carry around 10 lbs worth of stuff (if I were to bring my own necessities like food/water/sunscreen/etc. and have to carry a bunch of souvenirs) in a plastic transparent bag for the whole day?! It's an obvious scam for more profit.
Re: Google Chrome is not faster than firefox 3.1 - Just a quick update here for Beat, To copy your bookmarks (and history, passwords etc if you want) from IE to Firefox: Open Firefox, Click File (top left of browser) Click Import Select IE Click Next follow the instructions provided, hope this helps, Carol
Re: Marketing ideas? - Questions will set you free... And make you Rich [quote="KH_Global":349pds7c]Just ask ask ask. That is it.[/quote:349pds7c]
Re: Contact Information - Another idea would be to have an email form in place to accept "ticketed" inquires (if people are afraid of spammers seeing their email address). However, I hate how some sites try to persuade you out of sending an email by bombarding you with lists of "Frequently Asked Questions & Answers" as I find they're rarely helpful.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

What Aweber Can Do For Your Online Business

Leading with Discernment

Five keys to business success

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.