Ask Shorter Questions!
Nic Coppings
Transforming Customer Engagement | Driving Growth @ Hi-Q Group | Creating Winning Relationships & Higher Quality Intelligence!
Take a moment to consider the questions you tend to ask your customers. Do you ask long, complex questions or short, open-ended questions? Elite Professionals understand the human intelligence gathering value of good questions.
However, not all questions are created equally. It's been proven that short questions generally elicit longer and more complete responses, while longer questions often deliver short answers. Larry King, one of the most respected TV interviews, when asked what the most critical question to ask in any conversation is, replied with 'Why,'”
While the one-word question sounds simple, “Why is what makes people go deeper… Why did you do that? Why did you say that?
Larry King would advise up-and-coming presenters to ensure their questions were always less than two lines. He told them that more than two lines probably wasn't a question and that they should find a better way to ask it.
So, shorten your questions, make sure you aren't “leading the witness” with a qualifying statement, and then use questions like "why" to fully understand why the customer answered the question the way they did.
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"What are the titles of some of the books you have read recently?" Through this question one can learn a great deal about a candidate and their desire for continued learning, growth and progression.
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Executive Director at Open Seas Technology Innovation Hub
7 年Nice piece Nic. The tendency to "lead the witness" is a killer of true understanding and leads to sub par value propositions.
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