You're listening to Business English Pod, the Business English podcast for professionals on the move.
This is the second in a two-part series on questioning techniques.
Last time we looked at making small talk and gathering information with open questions, getting specific information with probing questions and guiding the conversation by showing interest.
This time we'll learn several more advanced questioning techniques, including direct questions to get information from someone who's being uncommunicative, reflective questions to guide the conversation and hypothetical questions to suggest possible action.
Together, these techniques form a series that can be used to drill down to get the information you need.
As you'll remember, the listening takes place in a customer needs analysis.
Brad, from chemical coatings producer Forrest and Brown, is visiting his customer, Andy.
Andy's company, Stratos, puts together circuit boards for use in consumer electronics.
At the end of part one, Brad had just used a probing question to determine what exact kinds of products Andy's company focuses on.
When he discovered that Stratus was making a lot of boards for TVs, Brad decides to follow this line of questioning.
As we'll see, this is because TVs are a good match for Brad's products.
The specific kind of TV they're talking about is an LCD, which is commonly referred to as a flat-screen TV.
Listening questions.
1.
LCD TVs produce a lot of heat.
Why is this important to Brad's sales pitch?
2.
What are Andy's main priorities in selecting conformal coatings to protect the circuit boards Stratus produces.
3.
What are the main good points of the coating that Brad wishes to sell to Andy?
LCDs, huh?
What kind of coatings are you using?
Uh, mostly silicon-based these days.
Tell me, Andy, do you use a room temperature cure or a heat cure?
Heat cures for the most part.
A lot of the products we work on obviously require a high degree of moisture and temperature resistance.
Right, so durability is a must.
What else is high on your list of concerns?
Worker and environmental safety are very important to us.
We get a fair degree of outgassing, so we have to be very careful.
I see.
What if I told you there was a way to achieve the same level of board protection using a room temperature cure with little or no outgassing?
Would you be interested?
Well, yeah, we probably would.
Do you have coatings like that?
Our ZX117 line is cured at room temperature and is very tough.
Are they expensive?
Actually, our customers find that they provide significant savings in terms of increased safety and streamlined production.
I've got the product data sheets here in my briefcase.
Would you like to see them?
Sure, let's have a look.
Brad starts off with an open question in an attempt to understand Andy's production process better.
As we learned last time, open questions are good to use when you're gathering general information.
LCDs, huh?
What kind of coatings are you using?
Mostly silicon-based these days.
Andy's reply to Brad's question is not very forthcoming.
That is, he doesn't provide Brad with very much new information.
Silicon is a very popular type of material for conformal coatings and there is a very wide variety of silicon-based products on the market.
To help him make a sale, Brad needs to know more about the products Andy is using.
To get past Andy's lack of communication, he uses a more advanced questioning technique.
Tell me Andy, do you use a room temperature cure or a heat cure?
Cure refers to the drying process of the coating.
After it is applied to the circuit board, the coating is still wet.
A room temperature cure does not require any extra heat to dry.
A heat cure coating is the opposite.
It requires a heat source to harden.
To get more specific information from Andy, Brad has used a direct question.
Direct questions can be open or closed, but they always have two things in common.
First, We use the name of the person we are talking to and second, we phrase the question as an instruction.
Brad says, tell me, Andy, do you use a room temperature cure or a heat cure?
When done properly, the direct question can have a powerful effect.
It's very hard not to answer a question phrased in this way.
It's a normal human reaction to respond automatically to an order when you hear your name.
So the direct question is a particularly effective tool to use when someone is being uncommunicative.
However, direct questions can sound impolite.
So when you need to be careful, it's better to use the type of polite, probing questions we learned in the first episode in this series.
What are some other ways to phrase a direct question?
Listen to some examples.
Tell me, Bill, how much more would you be willing to pay for a one year warranty?
Explain to me, Jill, how you decided that safety was your top priority.
Describe to me, Ravi, how you currently book airline tickets.
How does Andy respond to Brad's question about whether he uses room temperature cure coatings or heat cure coatings?
Heat cures, for the most part.
A lot of the products we work on obviously require a high degree of moisture and temperature resistance.
Resistance means the ability to resist or withstand something.
Moisture refers to water in the air.
In this case, temperature means hot or cold.
So moisture and temperature resistance means the ability to withstand wet air and the extremes of hot and cold.
Andy seems to think that a heat cure is required for a high degree of moisture and temperature resistance.
But as we'll see, Brad has another idea.
However, he doesn't have enough information yet to make a sale.
So he continues his line of questioning with another type of advanced questioning technique called a reflective question.
Right, so durability is a must.
What else is high on your list of concerns?
In a reflective question, we first reflect what the prospect just said, to show that we're interested.
To do this, we can use a summary or paraphrase, or we can use echo words, as we studied in the first episode in this series and in BEP 45.
Brad chooses to summarize what Andy has just said.
Durability is a must.
Durability means toughness or strength.
Brad is referring to Andy's need for coatings with moisture and temperature resistance.
After we've reflected the prospect's words, we then ask another question open or close to guide him or her to provide us with even more information.
Andy asks, What else is high on your list of concerns?
That is, what else is important to you?
The reflective question is useful in many situations.
For example, perhaps the prospect is communicative and forthcoming, but the information so far is either not enough or not helpful to us.
We need to encourage the prospect by acknowledging that we are listening.
Then we need to guide the prospect towards giving us further information.
What are some other examples of reflective questions?
Remember in these examples first we acknowledge or reflect what we've heard, then guide the conversation with a new question.
I see, Hamish.
Convenience is very important to you.
What else do you think about when buying a plane ticket?
Ah, cut and color are both very important in buying a diamond.
I totally agree.
What are your other main areas of concern?
So I understand that the location is a major priority.
What else is high on your list?
I understand.
Price is important.
What else do you have on your mind?
How does Andy respond to Brad's reflective question about his other main areas of concern?
Worker and environmental safety are very important to us.
We get a fair degree of outgassing, so we have to be very careful.
What is outgassing?
This refers to the creation of harmful gases during the cure process.
Andy's concern about environmental and worker safety is very good news for Brad.
These are areas that Forrest and Brown's products do very well in.
Notice that Brad has not brought up these areas himself.
Instead, he's used a skillful line of questioning to get Andy to talk about them first.
When the prospect comes to the idea by himself, the selling power will be much higher.
Now Brad uses another type of question to make his pitch or selling proposal.
Let's listen.
I see.
What if I told you there was a way to achieve the same level of board protection using a room temperature cure with little or no outgassing?
Would you be interested?
Hypothetical questions are formed with past tense and would.
What if I told you, would you, As we saw in BEP 47, Cold Calling, 2 hypothetical questions provide a good way of summarizing how your proposal or product meets your prospect's needs.
It is the pitch, the point when you first ask a customer to buy something.
Therefore, hypothetical questioning takes our questioning techniques one step further than just gathering information.
It is questioning as a form of persuasion, a way of getting the prospect to see things our way.
This kind of question is certainly useful in a needs analysis situation where the goal is to find a good match between customer and product and to make a sale.
However, it is also helpful in a wide variety of different situations.
Anytime you need to get a point across, You can end your line of questioning with this kind of pitch, whether it's for an idea or a product.
What are some other examples of hypothetical questions in action?
Would it be safe to say that if there was a way for you to overcome your training obstacles, it would be worth discussing in more detail?
So would you say that if we could address all your concerns about affordability and safety, you could strongly consider taking a closer look at this product?
Ms.
Smith, if we had a service that specifically addressed all your concerns, would you be interested in learning more about it?
If we could demonstrate a service that satisfied all your needs, would you say it would be worth exploring in more detail?
Of course, not all questions are so advanced as the techniques we have looked at today.
What is Andy's main concern after Brad makes his pitch?
Are they expensive?
Andy rightly wants to know how much Brad's coatings cost.
To get this specific information, he asks a simple closed question.
Also notice that the question is very direct because, as a prospect, he is in a position of power with respect to the salesperson.
You'll remember, from last time we learned that a closed question is one to which we can only answer yes or no.
But Brad does better than that.
Actually, our customers find that they provide significant savings in terms of increased safety and streamlined production.
I've got the product data sheets here in my briefcase.
Would you like to see them?
Instead of unskillfully answering why yes, they are expensive, which indeed they probably are, Brad uses a positive communication technique to avoid a simple, direct answer.
Instead of answering directly, he focuses on the customer benefit of his product.
In the final analysis, he suggests his codings can help Stratos save money through increased environmental and worker safety and decrease production costs.
Brad's skillful answer reminds us that it's much more important to communicate the benefit and value of your idea rather than answering every question directly.
This principle is similar to the old motto of public relations professionals.
Rather than answering the question that you were actually asked, answer the question that you wish you had been asked.
Before we finish the show today, let's practice.
We'll focus on one specific technique that we learned in this episode, the reflective question.
Imagine you're visiting a customer.
First, he or she will provide you with some information, such as I really care about the color of the final product.
Then you will hear a beep.
After the beep, ask a reflective question.
First acknowledge, reflect the prospect's concern.
Then try to understand what else is important to him or her.
For example, in response to I really care about the color, you might say I see, so color is a main priority.
What else is important to you?
Are you ready?
After each exercise, we'll play an example answer for you.
When it comes to TVs, I really care about the sharpness of the picture.
Answer.
When it comes to TVs, I really care about the sharpness of the picture.
So picture quality is obviously an area of concern for you.
What else is high on your list of priorities?
Well, as you know, I really want a sports car, but safety is the most important thing for me.
Answer.
Well, as you know, I really want a sports car, but safety is the most important thing for me.
Aha, safety.
That's very important.
What else would you say is a major area of concern for you?
I've been looking into it, and as far as I can see, the main thing for me is price.
I need something affordable.
Answer.
I've been looking into it and as far as I can see, the main thing for me is price.
I need something affordable.
I see.
So, affordability is a concern.
What else do you have on your mind?
How did you do?
Of course, there are many possible correct answers.
When you go back and try it again, you can substitute different language to practice fluency.
That's about all for this series on questioning techniques.
We've looked at some strategies that can be used individually or in concert to drill down to the key information that you need.
We studied open and closed questions, probing questions, direct questions, reflective questions and hypothetical questions.
Skillful questioning makes you more efficient and effective in your job, whether you're a salesperson or an engineer, a customer service representative or a banker.
A key part of all of our jobs is understanding the needs and views of colleagues and customers.
To do this, we must ask questions.
The more skillful we are at asking questions, the better we'll understand those around us.
And this is a key part of success in our lives and careers.
You can get further practice in the Online Learning Center at www.BusinessEnglishPod.com.
In addition, you'll find a full transcript vocabulary, definitions and additional exercises in the study notes for this and other episodes.
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