Persuasion and the Art of Curiousity

If you’ve taken any communications course, you have probably heard that ‘asking is better than telling’. For example, as a parent, while your inside voice might be screaming at your teenager to 'clean your room' or 'mow the lawn', it’s usually more effective to use your outside voice to request completion of one of those tasks. That might sound like: Hey, how about you mow the lawn this morning before we head out this afternoon? Does it always work? Probably not, but it might ensure a higher rate of success!

In Sales, we often talk about the art of asking good questions to understand your customer’s needs. In general, I totally agree – asking good open-ended questions does usually get your customer talking and the more they talk, the more information you are able to gather. Not just about their needs, but also what kind of a person they are, what motivates them and at the end of the day, what is really going to matter to them.

We also talk about the importance of probing questions, those follow-up questions designed to get the customer to open up even more. For example, in answer to How’s business been for the past couple of years?, they might say that they had a dip in sales in 2017 but then it turned around in 2018 and has been good until this year’s pandemic. It would be good to know what they did to turn things around back in 2018 – so a good probing question might be What do you attribute that change to back in 2018? Asking ‘What’ and ‘How’ questions are usually the best way to keep the conversation going in a comfortable way that ensures good information is exchanged.

Have you ever noticed what happens when someone asks a question that starts with ‘Why?’ In both our business environment and our personal lives, 'Why?' can be a loaded question. Just recently I overheard two people discussing whether or not masks were necessary when walking on the seawall. One person asked the other point blank ‘Why aren’t you wearing a mask?’ and the other person got quite defensive, quickly escalating what could have been a conversation into a more heated discussion. ‘Why?’ tends to confront and challenge the other person’s point of view. I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened if the first person had instead asked: What do you think it would take for you to wear a mask? This is a question that might help open the other person up, rather than challenge them.

So, if you want to persuade, 'ask' don’t 'tell' - but when you ask, use 'what' and 'how' questions to help you remain curious, not confrontational!

Photo byJason RosewellonUnsplash