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Where is your inner six year old when you need them?

Guest post by: Sue Barrett

Article Overview: One of the biggest issues for sales people is knowing the right questions to ask customers. In our experience many people complain of not knowing how to structure questions, or knowing what type to ask and when to ask them. In fact, we have found that many people are often caught wanting in the questioning department and suffer from what we call ‘amnesia questionitis’. Why is this so? Why are so many people paralysed when it comes to the vital skill of questioning? If you have been around any children aged from 3-6 years old you will know that they do not suffer from ‘amnesia questionitis’. In fact they never stop asking questions. It has been shown that asking questions and seeking answers comes naturally to all of us and as children we excel in this area. They also excel at listening too.

Where is your inner six year old when you need them?

One of the biggest issues for sales people is knowing the right questions to ask customers.

In our experience many people complain of not knowing how to structure questions, or knowing what type to ask and when to ask them. In fact, we have found that many people are often caught wanting in the questioning department and suffer from what we call ‘amnesia questionitis’.

Why is this so? Why are so many people paralysed when it comes to the vital skill of questioning?

If you have been around any children aged from 3-6 years old you will know that they do not suffer from ‘amnesia questionitis’.

In fact they never stop asking questions. It has been shown that asking questions and seeking answers comes naturally to all of us and as children we excel in this area. They also excel at listening too. The two skills go hand in hand.

Everyone is born curious to some extent that is how we find out about the world. As children we want to know how things work, why this happens, where things come from, etc. Children will keep asking until they get a satisfactory answer.

Only the other night my eldest son asked me if I was ever afraid of the dark. It was a great question because it showed me a number of things about my 11 year old son:

1. He still had the desire to know about things and felt safe and confident to ask me

2. He clearly wanted to talk about this now

3. He wanted to understand why this happens and was he the only one it happened to

As we explored the topic he realised that most people feel or have felt afraid of the dark at some stage and that it is quite normal. I shared with him how I felt and what I used to do about it. He also came to his own conclusion that it was his imagination that was making him feel afraid at times and that he could control that too if he wanted and how funny it was that you could let your mind trick you. We had a great chat and it was easy and enlightening.

I have lost count of all the questions my children have asked me to date, but I love this quality about my children. By them asking me so many different questions I have learned so much about them, myself and the world we live in. For instance I have been able to answer questions I didn’t get answers to when I was little but had been on my mind since I was 6 or 7. I want to point out that I don’t always answer all of my children’s questions, I have also taught them how to answer question for themselves through reasoning skills and self inquiry. When we can’t answer something the saying in our family is ‘Google is your friend’. My mother laughs every time I tell her about my children’s questioning abilities because she says ‘that sounds exactly like you’.

You have probably gathered by now, especially those who have been reading my articles for some time or those how know from my work that I never stop asking questions. It is a life skill that I cherish dearly. It has opened up so many doors for me and made me a much better person for doing so.

So it saddens me when I meet people who feel they are unable to ask questions or do not know where to start or feel they need to be given permission to do so.

What happened to their natural ability to ask questions? It seems that as we grow up, many of us seem to lose the desire to ask questions. Maybe it was because we lost some of initial curiosity because we get caught up in the day to day grind and just want to rest.

Maybe we have been taught to not question. Often times at school we were taught to receive the ‘right’ answer rather than to question it. Although I, personally seemed to ignore this one at my peril sometimes.

Maybe some children were never listened too and instead ignored so they never had their questions answered so they eventually gave up.Others of us became self conscious, wanting to fit and so didn’t question the prevailing paradigms of the time or situation. Or we did not want to appear stupid if we as a ‘dumb’ question. Again I, ignored these too.

I find when we facilitate workshops that I have to state to the participants that there is no such thing as a dumb question and you should question things. I encourage them to test assumptions, work things through, ask ‘why?’ and ‘how?’, etc. I inform them that I am not there to tell them what to think but to show them how to think.

When prospecting or selling I often say to people ‘What is the worst thing you will hear if you ask someone for a sale or an appointment?’ a ‘No’. Big deal. At least you know. The worst thing is not asking at all because then you will never know.

Asking questions implies that you are using ‘thinking’ as a skill. Thinking requires effort. As Henry Ford said ‘Thinking is the hardest job going around that is why most people don’t do it.’

Maybe people are lazy and just don’t care. But I don’t think so. Why would we get so many requests about how to ask good questions? Yes there is skill in knowing what questions to ask, when and how to ask them – for instance we have a workshop solely dedicated to this topic.

However, the purpose of this piece is not to go into what questions to ask but why are so we many of us lacking in this area?

There is a big risk of not asking questions

When we don’t ask questions we are at risk of accepting what we are told is true. This can then lead to all sorts of issues such as:

* being told something is true when it is not

* making assumptions and being caught out taking the wrong approach

* being misled and losing out as a result

* acting unwisely and causing harm to yourself or others

* giving people what they don’t need

* creating more problems than there were before

We need to bring back our 6 year olds – in a slightly more professional form of course and find and reignite our natural talent for questioning again.

Effective questioning is a vital life skill that should be cherished and exercised on a very regular basis. It affects every aspect of our lives on professional and personal levels.

Questioning does not tell you what to think it shows you how to think.

So ask yourself the question: “how do you encourage effective questioning in yourself and your team?’

Using effective questioning techniques is one of the most significant key differentiators between a person with good sales skills and a person with outstanding sales skills. However, many sales people find this the most challenging aspect of the sales process. Questions are used to not only assist you with gathering information about the customer i.e. their needs, situation, issues and priorities but also, when used effectively, assist the customer with coming to a clear understanding and realisation about what they need to do for themselves, hopefully with your assistance.

Although questions are asked at all stages of the Sales Process, most questioning should take place within the Customer Needs Analysis Phase which should occur near the beginning of the Sales Communication Process. Despite the sales approaches of the past where sales people had a tendency to do most of the talking, the Customer Needs Analysis Phase is actually where you need to ask great questions and spend most of your time listening to the answers. As a rule of thumb you should spend about 20% of you time speaking, in particular, asking questions and 80 % listening in this phase. Test yourself or others next time, it may come as quite a shock how little time we spend listening to our customers.

Although it is the Phase where you do the least talking, it can also be considered the most important Phase of the sale. It is at this stage that a number of critical things take place if you are handling the Customer Needs Analysis Phase effectively:

1. You gain an understanding of the customer’s needs, priorities, issues, perceptions, prejudices, fears, etc.
2. You come to have a deeper understanding of the customer’s buying motivators or intentions.
3. You build rapport and trust with the customer by listening effectively and demonstrating empathy towards their situation. Key is being able to see if from their point of view.
4. You are able to probe deeper into their situation using effective questioning techniques that help the customer to see a greater, tangible need for your product or service.
5. You establish what the consequences and opportunities are for the customer and how working with you will add value for them.

One of the fundamental aspects of the Sales Process is that customers value conclusions about their needs that they have come to themselves rather than conclusions that salespeople present to them. It is through the effective use of questions that you are able to assist customers with self-discovery and understanding their needs for themselves.

Finally, incorporating a suite of different questions and pursuing them in such a way that you and the customer gain a clear understanding of what is a required legitimises you as a trusted partner. This approach enables you and the customer to come to the realisation of whether they need to take up your solution or not. Whilst it may sound absurd to not proceed with a sale, effective questioning enables you to determine who will be a suitable and viable client to work with and who will not. We need to press home to all sales people that not every sale is going to be a good sale and effective questioning helps you make that determination quickly so that you can get onto the customers you want in your portfolio.

As mentioned previously, everyone was born with the ability to ask questions and be curious. If this has waned in your sales team and business recently, may I suggest you have questioning skill sessions where you practice questioning as part of ongoing development. Come up with questions that work. Look at how and why they work and share them around with everyone so we can all improve our questioning fitness.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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Article Tags: effective questioning, sales communication, sales process, vital skill



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