Chapter 9
Discover The Power of Asking Great Questions
When I engage in a conversation with the intention of achieving a particular result, I spend less than 15% of the conversation speaking. That is, I try to allow the other person in the conversation to do most of the speaking. There are many reasons for this, which you will soon find The main reason is that when they walk away from the conversation, I want them to think “God, I like that guy, that was a wonderful conversation!” I mean, let’s face it, how could they possibly not enjoy the conversation if they were doing most of the talking!
When you ask someone a question, it grabs their attention; it pulls their concentration toward you as they attempt to satisfy your question. It gets them involved in a conversation, and getting them involved with you is part of building a good relationship. More importantly, questions allow you to uncover the needs, desires, and beliefs of your client, as well as other important information that will allow you to further the relationship and move forward in the conversation. The key is asking the right questions at the right moment.
Questions also allow you to:
1) Control and lead your client to the decisions you want them to make.
2) Isolate areas of interest or decision trigger points.
3) Acknowledge facts (such as facts that are used to lead them to a decision).
4) Receive minor agreements.
5) Arouse and control emotion.
6) Isolate objections or areas of concern.
7) Lead the client into answering their own questions and/or objections.
8) Instill indirect suggestions or otherwise get your client to think about and/or consider things they may not have considered.
To be effective, questions need to be thought out. There are five requirements that all questions should follow:
1) Have A Purpose: Effective questions should be designed to elicit a specific response. The desired response may be verbal or non-verbal, and it may be thoughtful or emotional.
2) Be Understood: The question needs to be understood by the receiver as it was intended.
3) Be Directed:
4) Be Specific: Effective questions are designed and expressed with specificity in mind. We covered specificity in chapter 6.
5) Preclude Guessing: Largely through the use of specificity, effective questions should prevent the listener from having to guess what was said or what was meant by the question.
Below is a list of some main classifications of questions… Other question types may be considered subcategories of these classifications. For example: W-H questions include any type of question that focuses on words, such as who, what, when, why, etc., but “challenging questions” also include these and may thus be considered W-H questions. This may not be a complete list of classifications:
There are a series of different classifications of questions referred to as W-H questions because they begin with these letters (with the exception of how). The main six W-H questions are who, what, where, when, why, and how. Other forms of W-H questions may include which, whose, and whom.
Question forms can essentially be broken down into two forms, and all other question forms stem from this:
1) Open-Ended Questions: Open-ended questions are those that allow the listener to answer without restrictions. The answer can be long or short and allows for a full dialogue of conversation.
2) Close-Ended Questions: Close-ended questions are those in which there is a limited number of possible answers.
1) Convergent: Any type of question can be a convergent question as long as it is designed to accept only one correct answer. Common question forms that are used for convergent questioning include multiple choice, definitions, true or false, fill in the blank, and calculations where there is only one correct answer.
Sometimes convergent questions may work on the principle of ideology, meaning the question can be answered in any manner as long as the concept or idea supporting the answer is the same. For example: if you were asked, “Where were you born?” the answer, essentially, would be the same regardless of the specific words that you used to answer the question. (i.e. “I was born in Toronto, Ontario” vs. “I was born Ontario’s largest metropolitan city, Toronto”).
2) Divergent: Divergent questions are the opposite of convergent questions (listed above). Divergent questions have no correct answer and are designed to get the client to synthesize information, open up, provide an opinion, or create a hypothesis.
Dichotomous vs. Multiple Choice Questions
1) Dichotomous: Also referred to as “alternative choice questions”, these are fixed questions that can only be answered in one of two ways. Examples of dichotomous questions include: yes or no, true or false, and right or wrong.
2) Multiple Choice Questions: These are questions that provide three or more possible answers. The possible answers are often fixed, meaning they are pre-determined by the questioner.
When asking questions, there should be some underlying goal or reason for asking the question – whether that be to acquire information, further the conversation, persuade or influence, or solicit some type of cognitive or emotional response. Below you will find a list of different question types to aid you in achieving those goals.
Also referred to as “involvement questions”, active questions require the client to be in the frame of mind of acting or doing something, or otherwise having previously acted. They effectively reframe or reposition the client’s reality in their own mind. Examples include:
“How often will you use the product?”
“Who will be using the product most?”
“Where will you place your _X_?”
Assumptive questions are used when you assume that the responder already has the information or ability. Assumptive questions are often used to test a person’s knowledge or otherwise to gain additional knowledge that may not have been readily offered – essentially gaining two pieces of information through one question. Take a look at the following sample question:
“Hey, Jason, where did John go?” (This question assumes that Jason knows where John went. We could have just asked “Jason, do you know where John went?”, but the assumptive version is much more direct by assuming that Jason already knew where John went).
Let’s look at another assumptive question: “Who else makes these kinds of decisions?” (The assumption here is that the responder is one of the people who makes those decisions and that there are others who are also involved. If the responder does not make the decisions, he would be likely to say so and plausibly offer the name of the person who does).
Challenging questions are designed to challenge a decision made by the client. They generally begin with “Why is…?”, “Why do…?”, or “Why would…?” For example:
“Why is this the only way it could happen?”
“Why do you believe that?”
“Why would you prefer these widgets over those?”
These questions are designed to get the client to clarify a previous statement. Examples include:
“What did you mean by…?”
“Can you clarify…?”
Comparative questions force the client to compare one thing against another. These could be two separate situations, objects, benefits, etc. Comparative questions usually start with the word “which”.
“Which do you think is better…?”
“Do you prefer _X_ or _Y_?”
The confirmation question is designed to answer a question asked by your client with a question that confirms their interest. For example: Let’s say your client asks you if a product comes in a different color (let’s say red), they would ask, “Does it come in red?” to which you would reply, “Would you like it in red?”
The “advanced confirmation question” would be to confirm the client has made the correct judgment; these questions usually begin with “Are you sure…?”, “Are you certain…?”, or some form of these. If the client asked, “Does it come in red”, the advanced confirmation would then be “Are you sure red is the best color for your needs?”
Also referred to as “filtering questions” or “qualifying questions”, these are questions that are asked in order to assist in determining if the client is qualified to respond to a second question.
The double blind question is one in which the answer remains the same, regardless of whether it is answered negatively or positively (i.e. with a yes or a no response).
Embedded questions are not really questions at all. They are actually statements that contain an implied question that remains unasked but the answer of which remains desired. An example of an embedded question would be “I can’t find my cell phone!” This statement contains the implied question of “Do you know where my cell phone is?”
Empowering questions seek to reduce the limitations of beliefs that people hold about a particular subject. They are used to clarify and help expand a person’s thought process about their beliefs, values, opinions, etc. Examples include:
“What could change your current situation?”
“How else could that have been handled?”
“Is there anything else that you could do in this case?”
These questions are designed to get the client to evaluate something, thus reducing the limitations of the beliefs that they hold about it. They are used to clarify and help expand a person’s thought process about their beliefs, values, opinions, etc. Examples may include:
“Why do you think that?”
“What causes you to believe that?”
“How do you think that affects…?”
This question form is used by repeating the exact statement made by the client but in a questioning manner and tone of voice, forcing the client to explain their statement in further detail. The general idea is to act truly surprised by the client’s statement so that when the client sees (or hears) your surprise, they will feel compelled to elaborate. This not only furthers the conversation but also forces the client to be more specific about their previous statement.
These questions ask the responder to “fill in the blank” and insert missing information or otherwise make conclusions based on some other established information. These are often used to cause the responder to look beyond what is obvious. Examples of inference questions may include:
“What do you think is meant by…?”
“Why do you think that happened?”
“What might have happened if…?”
Interpretive questions are questions designed to gain a better understanding of, or interpret, the meaning that is intended by the speaker. These questions will usually begin with some form of the following:
“What do you mean…?”
“Can you define…?”
“Why do you think…?”
Interrogative questions use W-H questions in an interrogative manner (generally as direct questions)… Below are some examples:
“Who went there?”
“What time was it?”
“Why did you do that?”
Leading questions are those that are designed to (attempt to) force the responder to answer with a pre-specified response. They are often designed using tag questions to entice the responder into the desired response. Most questions that use tag questions are actually leading questions. Leading questions may alternatively be designed as direct statements using a stress of inflection to turn the statement into a question.
An example of a leading question with a tag question would be: “You went out to the bar without me last night, didn’t you?” The same leading question can be asked without the use of the tag question as follows: “You went out to the bar last night.” The inflection can be stressed at “you”, “went out”, “the bar”, or “last night”, depending on the focus of the leading question (the words where the inflection is stressed would cause that part of the sentence to be the focus of the question).
These are questions that are designed to extract information that may be considered personal to the responder. Some examples follow:
“What is your name?”
“How old are you?”
“What do you do in your leisure time?”
Provocative questions are designed to challenge what is already known or accepted.
The fast food restaurant Wendy’s used a provocative question throughout North America in their 1984 commercial, the slogan being “Where’s The Beef?” This catchphrase was designed to show how their hamburger had more beef than the competition.
Other examples of provocative questions may include:
“What is the purpose of this?”
“Is there anything useful in this book?”
“What the heck are you doing?”
“Are you tired of working 9 to 5?”
Reflective questions are designed to get the client to think about their reasoning, knowledge, feelings, or any aspect of their internal processing.
“How do you make those decisions?”
“What criteria do you look for?”
“How do you really feel when that happens?”
Rhetorical questions are questions to which a response is unneeded because the answer is already known to both the speaker and the listener.
These are questions that ask the person answering to remember information from past experience. They often begin with phrases such as “Do you remember…?” or “Can you recall…?”
“Do you remember when you learned to ride a bike?”
“Can you recall the last time you bought a used car?”
Probing questions are a category of questions designed to gather additional information about an answer to a previous question. They often use the interrogative question form (described above) and are designed to seek additional information that can be used to further the conversation on a particular topic.
Much like interrogative questions, probing questions make use of W-H questions (who, when, where, what, why, and how).
Some of the topics that you may want to consider probing for include:
1) Emotion: Why does the responder feel the way he does about a particular answer? (i.e. “Did that make you feel bad about the whole situation?”)
2) Relevance: Ask how two things are connected, related, or relevant to each other. (i.e. “How does that relate to the current conversation?”)
3) Elaboration: Ask for elaboration on the response that was given. (i.e. “Can you tell me more about that?”)
4) Completeness: Ensure that all the information has been disclosed. (i.e. “Is there anything else you may have missed?”)
5) Concerns: Ask about concerns, doubts, or objections. (i.e. “Do you think there may be a problem with that?”)
A tag question is a two- or three-word question that is added to the end of a statement or sometimes to the end of another question. These questions usually require simple one- or two-word responses such as “yes”, “no”, “it could”, “I did”, etc.
Tag questions, and the preceding statement, generally make use of modal verbs such as “would”, “could”, “should”, “shall”, etc.
There are two main forms of tag questions, they are:
1) Balanced Tag Question: Balanced tag questions use an opposite polarity for statement and its associated tag question, which means if the statement is of a positive form, then the associated tag question will be of a negative form (i.e. “You want to know more, don’t you?”)
Balanced tag questions are applied to force the responder to respond in a desired manner. Examples include:
“You did think it was crazy, didn’t you?”
“You do want this new widget, don’t you?”
2) Unbalanced Tag Questions: Unbalanced tag questions use a similar polarity for both the statement and its associated tag question, meaning if the statement is of a positive form, then the associated tag question will also be of a positive form. Below are some examples:
“You want to know more, do you?”
“We both understand what it feels like, don’t we?”
Unbalanced tag questions are designed to apply additional emphasis on the question itself.
* Tag questions may also be categorized by type, meaning by the result they wish to achieve. The difference is in the intention of the speaker. Below are a few types of tag questions.
1) Inquisitive Tag Questions: These are tag questions designed to inquire about something. For example: “He is doing well in school, isn’t he?”
2) Declarative Tag Questions: Often referred to as “exclamatory tag questions”, these are tag questions designed to make a statement. For example: “That is a great vacation, isn’t it?”
3) Assumptive Tag Questions: The assumptive tag question is an inquisitive tag question that attempts to confirm an assumptive statement. An example of this would be: “You would do a better job, wouldn’t you?”
4) Erroneous Conclusion Tag Questions: This tag question is pre-stated by making a statement that is obviously false and then using a tag question in an attempt to confirm the obviously false statement. Under particular circumstances, this type of question may help reduce resistance as it may give the appearance of being comical or rhetorical. Below are two examples:
“None of us would like to have more money, would we?”
“We couldn’t make things better if we tried, could we?”