Questioning Strategies

1Session at a glance

2Open (0:00, 4 minutes)

• Write the two column headings on the board now, Softening statement and Question, and leave them empty. The room fills them during the Concept and the Do.
• Say what it buys on Monday: everybody in the room gets asked questions they answer too fast, and the fix is one sentence long.
• Restate where this sits: session 04 covered pain, the compelling reason a client has to do something about a problem and what it is costing them. This session is the questioning technique that gets those answers out of somebody who came in wanting to ask the questions themselves.

3Concept (0:04, 22 minutes)

Seventy-thirty, and what knowledge costs you early (6 min)

• Give the target first and make the room do the arithmetic with you. In a first meeting the client should do about seventy percent of the talking and we should do about thirty. For a 45-minute meeting, used here only as a model figure, seventy percent is 0.70 times 45, which is 31.5 minutes for them, and thirty percent is 0.30 times 45, which is 13.5 minutes for us.
• Ask the room to say honestly which way their last client meeting ran. Do not correct anybody. The point of the question is that people already know.
• Now name the thing that flips the split. It is product knowledge. The more of what you know you put on the table, the more of the talking you are doing, and the two move together every time.
• Name it: the finding that displaying product knowledge early works against you is called the dummy curve, and holding it back on purpose is called dummying up. Use the names once, then use the plain description, because the names are the vocabulary in the workbook and nowhere else.
• Give the three reasons for holding it back, in this order, and let the room argue with each one before moving to the next. One, it is unpaid consulting: the advice is the product, and giving it away in a first meeting means the meeting was the deliverable. Two, you learn nothing while you are talking: information moves one direction at a time and the direction you need is toward you. Three, you end up solving the wrong problem: the question somebody asks first is rarely the thing that is actually wrong, so an answer aimed at it is aimed at the wrong target.
• Say the correction plainly so nobody hears it as a reason not to learn: learn everything you can about what we do, and be slow about saying it in a first meeting.

The question you answer and the question you do not (5 min)

• Deal with the objection before the room raises it, and say it in their words: holding back an answer feels like withholding help. Agree with that. Then draw the line.
• Work the two cases side by side. A client with a signed agreement puts a ticket in Syncro saying Outlook keeps prompting for a password. That answer goes back as fast as we can produce it, and nothing in this session applies. A prospect with nothing signed asks in a first meeting what it would take to move fifty users off an aging on-premises server to Microsoft 365 and what their tenant should look like. Answering that produces the migration plan, and the migration plan is what we would have been paid to build.
• Now give the test as two questions, and write both on the board. Has somebody already paid for this answer? And does the answer take work, or does it take recall? Recall for a client, answer it. Recall for a prospect, usually answer it, because refusing a fact anybody could look up costs trust and buys nothing. Work for somebody with nothing signed, that is scoping, and scoping gets an agreement before it gets done.
• Give the plain third check for the borderline case: if the answer would end up written into a proposal, it is the proposal.
• Close the block with what reversing is not. It is not a refusal. You will answer, later, and the answer will be better because you will know what they were actually asking.

The client's picture (4 min)

• Start with the example, not the principle. A medical practice asks us to quote twelve replacement workstations. We look at the environment and we think they also need multi-factor authentication, meaning a second proof of identity beyond a password, on their remote access. Tell them that and watch what happens: they get defensive about the setup they already have, and the workstation quote now has an argument attached to it.
• Now name what happened. The client walked in with a picture of what they need. Every addition you make to that picture without asking causes resistance, and the resistance is to the addition being made for them rather than to the thing itself.
• Give the same move done as a question. "When one of your staff logs in from home in the evening, how do you confirm it is really them?" If they want that in the picture, they put it there themselves and it is now their idea. If they do not, nothing has been damaged and the workstation quote is still clean.
• State the rule as what was just done: a feature you want the client to consider is raised as a question, never asserted. Ask the room for one thing they wish clients would buy and turn it into a question out loud, on the spot.

Reversing, and why it needs a softening statement (5 min)

• Demonstrate the wrong version first, deliberately, on a volunteer. Have them ask what we charge per user, and answer with a flat "why do you ask?". Let the room hear how that lands. It sounds like an interrogation and the volunteer will visibly close up.
• Now do the same question with four words in front of it: "That is a fair question. Before I give you a number that could be wrong, what made you ask about price first?" The question did not change. The sentence in front of it did.
• Name both pieces. Reversing is answering a question with a question. A softening statement is the short acknowledgment that goes in front of it so the question does not read as a challenge. Every reverse has both, in that order, with no pause between them.
• Walk the table in section 6 of the Learner Guide out loud, one row at a time, and say each one the way you would say it to a client rather than reading it. Then have the room say three of them back in unison, because the first time anybody says "I am glad you asked" out loud it sounds fake and the second time it does not.
• Give the four short phrases that buy a question instead of an answer, and say they are the cheapest tool in the session: "I am not sure I follow." "Help me out here." "Say more about that." "I do not know, what do you think?"

Three reverses, and the question nobody asked (2 min)

• Set the expectation so nobody stops after one: it usually takes three or more reverses before you get the real reason. The first two answers tend to be intellectual, the reasons a person gives when they are still deciding how much to tell you. The third tends to be the real one.
• Give the exception in the same breath, because without it people reverse past the point of politeness: when somebody asks the same question twice, answer it. A question that comes back unchanged is not hiding anything, it is a person who wants an answer.
• Last idea, and it is the one to end on. A client says "we are happy with our current provider." That is a statement. Most people hear it as the question "why should we switch to you?" and start answering that, which nobody asked. What to say instead is a reverse: "That is good to hear. What do they do that you would want us to keep doing?"

4Show (0:26, 10 minutes)

1. Set the scene in one sentence. Named volunteer plays an office manager at a manufacturer in Chesterfield who called us this morning. Presenter plays themselves. Nobody is acting, and the volunteer answers naturally rather than helpfully.
2. Run it wrong first, for ninety seconds. Volunteer opens with the price question. Presenter answers it fully, gives a per-user figure, explains what is included, and keeps going. Stop it and ask the room two questions: what did we learn about their business, and what happens next in that conversation.
3. Reset and run the same opening again. This time, reverse it. Softening statement, then question. Get to the third reverse and no further, so the room sees the shape rather than a whole meeting.
4. Debrief against the rule of three. Read back what the volunteer said on the first reverse, the second and the third, and ask the room which of the three sounded like a reason and which sounded like the truth. In most runs the third answer names something specific that the first two did not.
5. Point at the board. Write the three softening statements the presenter actually used in the left column and the three questions in the right column, in the words they came out in, not tidied up.
6. Do one unasked question. Have the volunteer say "we are happy with our current provider," and reverse it in front of the room. Say what you did not do, which was explain why we are better.

5Do (0:36, 13 minutes)

1. Pair off. Odd number makes one three, with the third person watching and timing. Put a technical seat with a sales seat wherever possible.
2. Person A asks a question they really get asked. Not an invented one. A real question from a real client or prospect, in the words it usually arrives in.
3. Person B reverses it three times. Softening statement, then question, three rounds, with A answering naturally in between. B is not allowed to answer the question at any point. Four minutes.
4. Swap. B asks their own real question, A reverses three times. Four minutes.
5. Everyone writes down their own three softening statements. In their own words, the ones they would actually say out loud without feeling ridiculous. These go in the Learner Guide and they are the thing each person keeps from this session.
6. Three people read their three out. Presenter picks, including at least one seat that does not carry a pipeline. Add any new ones to the left column on the board.

6Check (0:49, 7 minutes)

1. Take a 45-minute first meeting as a model figure. Under the seventy-thirty rule, how many minutes are yours, and if the split came out the other way around, what is the most likely cause?

   Answer

   Thirty percent of 45 minutes is 0.30 times 45, which is 13.5 minutes for us, leaving 0.70 times 45, or 31.5 minutes, for the client. The most likely cause of the reverse split is product knowledge being put on the table early. The more of what we know we say, the more of the talking we are doing, and those two move together.

2. A client with a signed agreement opens a Syncro ticket asking why Outlook keeps prompting for a password. A prospect with nothing signed asks what it would take to move their fifty users off an aging server to Microsoft 365. Apply the test to both and say what you do with each.

   Answer

   The test is two questions: has somebody already paid for this answer, and does the answer take work or recall. The ticket is a client who has paid, and the answer is recall, so it goes back as fast as we can produce it. The migration question is a prospect with nothing signed and the answer takes work, because it means looking at their environment and designing something. That is scoping, and scoping gets an agreement before it gets done. The plain check for anything in between: if the answer would end up written into a proposal, it is the proposal.

3. You are quoting twelve replacement workstations for a medical practice and you think they also need multi-factor authentication on remote access, which they have not raised. Why does telling them so tend to go badly, and what do you do instead?

   Answer

   They arrived with a picture of what they need and it does not have that in it. An addition made to that picture without asking causes resistance, and the resistance attaches to the workstation quote as well. Instead, raise it as a question: when a staff member logs in from home in the evening, how do you confirm it is really them. If they want it in the picture they add it themselves. If they do not, nothing is damaged.

4. You have reversed a prospect twice and they ask the identical question a third time. What do you do, and why is the obvious answer wrong?

   Answer

   Answer the question.

   The obvious answer is to reverse again, because the rule of three says it usually takes three or more reverses to get the real reason. That is wrong here, and the exception is specific: when somebody asks the identical question twice, you answer it. The rule of three describes what happens when each reverse produces a new answer, because the first two tend to be intellectual and the third tends to be the real one. A question that comes back unchanged is not hiding anything. Reversing it again reads as evasion and costs more than the answer is worth.

5. A prospect says "we are happy with our current provider." What do most people do with that sentence, and what would you say?

   Answer

   Most people treat it as the question "why should we switch to you?" and start answering that, which nobody asked. It is a statement, and a statement gets a reverse rather than a rebuttal. Something like: that is good to hear, what do they do that you would want us to keep doing. The answer to that tells you what is working, and the gaps in it tell you what is not.

6. Why does a reverse need a softening statement in front of it, and what happens to the conversation without one?

   Answer

   Because a bare question in place of an answer reads as a challenge. "Why do you ask?" on its own sounds like an interrogation, and the person stops volunteering things. The softening statement acknowledges the question first, so the question that follows reads as interest rather than resistance. The question is the same either way, and the acknowledgment in front of it is what changes how it lands.

7Close (0:56, 4 minutes)

Work before the next session

• The practice steps in section 8 of the Learner Guide: three softening statements written in your own words, used at least twice each in a real conversation, with what came back written down.
• One question you get asked regularly, written out with the reverse you will use next time it arrives.
• Chapter 5 of the Sandler Foundations workbook, in the reference folder, for anyone who wants the source.

Next session

06 - Uncovering Budget. How to find out what a client is willing and able to invest before we write anything, why the number they say first is rarely the number they have, and what to do when the answer is that they have not thought about it.

Open items to settle

• Whether the three softening statements each person writes today get collected into one list that new hires get, and where that list lives in Notion.
• Where the line sits for scoping questions that arrive on a Syncro ticket from a client who is asking about work outside their agreement, and who decides.

8Sources

• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations, chapter 5, Questioning Strategies: chapter PDF.
• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations: full workbook PDF.

The dummy curve, dummying up, reversing, the softening statement and the rule of three are Sandler's terms. The seventy-thirty arithmetic, the medical practice and workstation example, the test for answering versus scoping, and everything about how this applies at Hermetic are ours.

9After the session