Spot leading, stacked and loaded questions and rewrite them.
Pick a meeting you recorded recently, play it back, and listen to your own questions and nothing else. Most people who try this get a surprise. Questions they remember as curious and open turn out, on the recording, to carry the answer inside them, to be two or three questions run together, or to sound like a telling-off. None of them felt wrong at the time, because the buyer answered. Each one still cost you a little goodwill and a large amount of information.
Three habits sit behind this: leading questions, stacked questions, and why questions that sound like blame. Lesson 3.2 of Sales foundations, "Open questions that get people talking", touched on the second and third. You can learn to catch all three in the way you actually speak and rewrite them. You can also handle the hard questions you can't avoid by telling the buyer your reason for asking.
A leading question hands the buyer the answer you want. Listen for openers like "would it not be better if", "don't you think", "wouldn't you agree" and "surely you'd want". Say you sell payroll software and ask, "Wouldn't it be better if payroll took one day instead of three?" (the figures are only an example). The buyer says yes, since no one picks the worse option, and you've learnt nothing about them. They also notice they're being walked toward a product, and from then on they're more careful with what they tell you.
Assumptions do the same thing more quietly. "How much is the overtime problem costing you?" takes for granted a problem the buyer has never raised, so you are telling them what's wrong with their business before finding out whether they agree.
To repair a leading question, leave the judging to the buyer. Ask a neutral question about how things are, such as "How long does payroll take each month?", and then ask for their view: "How do you feel about that?" or "Is that a problem, or just how it is?" If they say it's fine, take them at their word for now and hold back the pitch. You avoid spending the meeting selling a fix for something they don't care about.
A stacked question asks two or three things in one breath: "How do you handle leave at the moment, and is it a problem, and who looks after it?" Buyers answer whichever part is easiest, usually the last one, and the rest are dropped. Because you heard an answer, you may not realise the other parts went missing.
Nerves cause a lot of stacking, and so does trying to be efficient. It doesn't save time and it doesn't help the buyer. A single clear question gets answered in full, while three stacked together get part of an answer to just one.
Break the stack into its separate questions and start with the widest: "How do you handle leave at the moment?" Then stop talking and wait. Buyers often cover the other points on their own. Whatever they leave out, ask about one question at a time.
Watch for a milder version too, where you ask a question and then offer sample answers: "What worries you most about the business? Like cash flow, or staff, or something else?" The buyer chooses from your list, and whatever they would have said themselves, which might have been more useful, stays unsaid. Ask the question and stop before the examples.
On paper, "why" is a good question word. In a meeting, "Why did you do that?" is often heard as "what were you thinking?" A buyer who already half suspects they got something wrong takes a why question as criticism, and spends the answer defending the decision rather than describing it.
Hafiz, who sells payroll software and first appeared in Lesson 1.3, "Handle the buyer who wants the pitch first", used to ask buyers "Why are you still doing payroll in Excel?" Every buyer responded with a long case for why Excel was fine. He switched to "What led you to set it up in Excel originally?" and "How did that come about?" He gets the same information as before, he also hears the story of how it happened, and the buyer stays at ease.
"What led to", "how did that come about" and "what was behind" all get at the reasons without the sting. To test a question before you use it, say it aloud in a slightly tired voice. If you sound like a parent or a manager who is unhappy with someone, reword it with one of those openers.
Certain questions stay difficult whatever words you choose: income, debts, family health, who else in the company has a say, what went wrong with the last supplier. You still have to ask them. The thing that eases them most is telling the buyer, before or as you ask, why you want to know, in terms that serve them. Without a reason, the buyer hears a demand for information. With one, they hear a request and can see what it's for. They're still free to decline, and few do, since the reason works in their favour.
For example: "So I don't suggest something that doesn't fit, can I ask roughly what your monthly commitments are?" Or: "I ask because some firms need sign-off from finance and some don't. Who else would be involved in a decision like this?" Asking about budget and money gets fuller treatment in Lesson 5.3, "Ask about money without making it awkward".
Rewrites that work are usually plain. Each of these takes out the built-in answer, the extra question or the edge, and the last one also gives a reason.
Leading: "Wouldn't it help to have everything in one app?" rewritten as "How do staff apply for leave and claims today?" Stacked: "Do you track overtime manually and is that slow?" rewritten as "How do you track overtime at the moment?" Blame: "Why didn't you get cover earlier?" rewritten as "What got in the way of sorting out cover before now?" No reason given: "What's your budget?" rewritten as "So I don't suggest something out of range, have you set aside an amount for this?"
Find a recording of a recent meeting, or failing that your notes from one, and have it ready before you start the activity below.
Go through a recent meeting recording or your notes. Find five questions that were leading, stacked or blaming, and rewrite each one.
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