by Daniel Jones

Created on: February 06, 2007

To gather information effectively you need to ask questions that get the information that you require while at the same time you want to avoid asking questions that make the customer think about information that you don't want them to think about.

The idea of asking the right questions is to guide the customer from where they are to where you want them to be. You want to guide their route through their map of reality. The best way to do this is to learn to ask questions that you already know the answer to.

You should always expect the best. If you think that you are unlikely to get a sale or think that the customer is going to be annoying or difficult you will probably create a self-fulfilling prophecy by behaving in a way that causes the outcome that you expect.

Ask questions, which presuppose change. Covering the areas below:

How will their life be different?
What do they think has stopped them getting what they are after so far?
Who will be the first to notice?
How will I, the salesperson know when it is time to close?
Use the miracle question? Which is a question designed along the lines of: If I could click my fingers and create the ideal product for you, what would it be and how would you know?

Ask exception questions. For example, if the customer is complaining about how they always get bad service you could ask questions that get them to agree that sometimes they have had good service.

The information gathering that you do should be solution-focused. It should be focused on a specific goal and on finding the resources that are needed to achieve that goal.

The different types of solution-focused questions are:

Exceptions (to break down problems)
Normalising (to break down problems, making what they say-normal)
Scaling (comparing one with another and increasing how much they like something by asking what would need to happen to make it better)
Discovering resources
Miracle questions
Changing the wordsminimising any problemusing time
Future pace to a time when they have the product

When you are gathering information you want to be finding resources that you can anchor to use later if necessary. You want to gather information about what the customer wants, needs and would like to have.

Ask questions covering:

What
When
Where
How

All of these areas should give you a clear picture of exactly what you should offer the customer.

Information gathering takes place all the time to some extent because you are always being provided with information the whole time you are

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