Questions - 5 - How do sales people use questions?

We’ve walked in the footsteps of Rudyard Kipling, Aristotle and Lewis Carroll, considering which questions help us with analysis and investigation.

We’ve learned the power of the closed yes/no question from Meatloaf and Jeremy Paxman.

Wouldn’t you like to find out how sales people persuade us to buy shiny new toys using questions?

Yeah! Why not?

A good sales person will use open-ended questions (Kipling’s six) to keep the conversation bouncing along, to gently find out what it is that you are looking for, and to build up your emotional commitment.

For whatever evolutionary reason, the mind will try to answer a question while it finds it easier to simply ignore a statement. This is the reason why FAQs work as a way of communicating small and un-related points about a product or service. Not only do they create the illusion of dialogue, they also provide hooks for the reader’s mind to latch on to. Questions are used powerfully and daily in advertisements, advertorial, political speeches and other copy that is written to persuade.

The simplest and best structured introduction to the power of questions that I have ever come across is How to Master the Art of Selling by Tom Hopkins. Hopkins is no stylist, he is the antithesis of an academic, but he really understands how questions work. It’s a book I recommend to anyone seeking to write or speak persuasively.

Hopkins lists these reasons for a sales person to ask questions

1. To gain control
2. To isolate areas of interest
3. To acknowledge a fact
4. To receive minor agreements
5. To arouse and control emotions
6. To isolate objections
7. To answer objections

We’ve seen the control thing with Paxo and Meatloaf.

Points 2 and 6 are about scoping something, about uncovering what is important and what is not important and drawing boundaries between them. It is important to me that I live in the sticks. It is important to the one I don’t live with that his house should be near a railway station. Good estate agents use questions to uncover that sort of thing. They should use Kipling’s six questions.

Acknowledging a fact - compare:

Them: Nasty weather today
You: Yes

with

Them: Nasty weather today
You: Isn’t it?

It’s a subtle difference, but the first one can be rather abrupt while the second one indicates a willingness to have a conversation. Saying “isn’t it?” instead of “yes” is a habit,which makes minor interactions with people serving in shops and waiting in bus queues softer and friendlier, and which encourages minor agreements between two people.

You can see how easy it is to use questions to gain minor agreements, can’t you? Simply turning a statement into a question is really effective, isn’t it? Doesn’t it get irritating, though? But isn’t it powerful?

To arouse and control the emotions. That’s the interesting one. That’s the one where the sales person’s true skills lie, because it has to be done without annoying the prospect. The prospect can know exactly what you are doing - a good sales person is the easiest person in the world to sell well to, but done well, the effect is irresistable. A sales person will uncover what turns you on about a product or service, and then they will use questions to reinforce the emotion. I remember standing by the the window of the house I live in now when the estate agent said “You said you wanted a good view, you couldn’t ask for a better view than that, now could you?” His question reinforced the emotion I was already feeling, because it is a good view.

Isolating objections is, as we’ve already seen, a scoping question. Using questions to answer objections is just another instance of using questions to persuade.

The key thing here is that questions - used with subtlety - are far more powerful than statements if you are trying to get someone to agree with you. If I tell you something is true, then that’s my opinion. If you tell me something is true, then it’s true.

Want to know more? ‘Course you do! There’ll be more another day.