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125: The power of asking short questions like Barbara Walters · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sales Bluebird podcast, which exists because at B2B startups it's hard to get consistent traction and scale the sales team.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sales Bluebird provides tips, tricks, experience, examples, inspiration, and ideas from people who've been doing this for many years and at many companies.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and today we're talking about how to get better at discovery.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most important steps in the sales process, as we know, but we're not maximizing the opportunity enough consistently.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: As a general rule, across all the calls I listen to across different companies, one conclusion I come to is we're not maximizing it enough.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there's various things that we can do to improve.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the biggest mistakes that we're making as a rule is the length of the questions that we're asking.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if I look at that, I can think of, for example, questions with lots of filler words, right?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: We got a good question, but we kind of fill in with words and we're we almost start talking and start asking the question without really knowing quite the way to ask the question.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever you don't really know what you're doing, you just start making it up as you go along.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than a simple, what time is it today?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: You might say, What time is it, you know, right now?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's kind of in the afternoon, um, and you kind of ums and fills ins and all the rest of it, right?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I hear questions with lots of filler words, and what should be a short question turns into a long one.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Another one is the question with the multiple choice answer, right?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the, you know, what time is it?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is it quarter past two, or do you think by now it's quarter past three?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it really more quarter to two or half past three, right?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or it might be this, or it might be tomorrow right now.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know, right?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So in a sales situation, we we ask the question and we almost like ask the prospect, is it this or is it that, or or is it this, or are you experiencing that?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we're we're kind of cutting them off as we're doing that, and we're getting lots of different options about perhaps what the answer might be.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: A third one that we do is we ask the question, and then we feel a need to explain all the background behind the question.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it usually goes along the lines of what time is it?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was thinking about how we allocate our time this afternoon and whether it's really important to do it this way or that way.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps it's this way, but it's really important to know because if we don't allocate it properly, well, happen, you know, it goes on and on and on, right?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we feel the need to really explain away what the reason is and all the background to the question.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Another one I see a lot of is the question with lots of follow-on questions, right?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: That might be what time is it?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: What time is it today?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: What time is it tomorrow?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: What time do you think it might be in Alaska today?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and right now, what time do you think it might be in in Spain?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And and then once you explain the time in Spain, what time is it better summer time or is it uh European time or is it uh US time?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And once we understand what time it is, I'm wondering if we're using a clock or a watch to really assess what time it is, right?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all these follow-on questions uh to the one that we really want to ask, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when you answer this one, I'm gonna ask you this, and I'm asking you that, and I'm asking this, and then what about that?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then tell me why, right?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the prospect sitting there going, what I don't know what I'm supposed to be answering right now.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I might even forgotten what the first question was.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I guess the uh uh the bad example above all bad examples is where it's a combination of all these things I mentioned, right?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like we give the multiple choice and we explain why we ask the question, and then there's multiple questions, and somehow the multiple choice is supposed to fit into the multiple questions, and then we have to do the because again, it's filler words, and uh it's just a mess.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I know in my career I I've done that before, right?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Usually when I'm not very confident about the situation I'm in, usually when I'm not exactly sure what sort of questions I should be asking, it's almost like I would at times start asking the question, trusting myself to have it figured out what the real question is by the time I stopped talking.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I did it once where I actually sat down with the CTO at a company at an organization, and luckily I had someone with me.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: My first question came out, and I I don't know, but it seemed like it was a five-minute long question.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I I'd probably be a little bit harder myself.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: It might be more like 30 seconds or 45 seconds.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember the CTO looked at me and just went, huh?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I was so embarrassed, uh, obviously, right?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the person next to me said, I think what Andrew was really getting at was, and he asked the right question, short to the point, all the rest of it, right?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we all do this, right?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And at times of being unsure, at times of being less than practiced about what we're doing, that's when these bad traits come out in terms of how we ask the questions.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And what it means for us is we come across as inexperienced, right?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like this is the first time we've ever asked a question of someone.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they they think prospects think other people think we're inexperienced.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: They think we lack credibility, especially if you're working with someone senior, right?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: You come across as someone who's not credible working at those levels.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're not used to that.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some people might think you're a time waster, right?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've got I've got half an hour set aside for this meeting, and this person's asking minute-long questions.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're wasting my time, and they don't even know what they're doing, right?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, you come across as someone that they don't really want to work with.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of doing all that, we need to make a change.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel like that's what you do and you catch yourself, you listen to the questions that you ask on your conversational intelligence uh tool, and you see it happening, uh, we need to make a change.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: The good thing is that we can steal ideas and approaches from the people who are great at asking really important and really telling questions.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the great interviewers that have been on TV in our lives over the last few decades who ask really good questions.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the one I'm gonna give an example of today is Barbara Walters.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you outside the US, Barbara Walters actually just recently retired from TV, and she was the one that whichever TV station that she was working with, she'd be trusted with getting the big interviews and going and handling those big big interviews.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: To give you an idea, in her career, she has interviewed Fidel Castro, Henry Kissinger, the Shah of Iran, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Vlaxlav Havill, Vladimir Putin, and multiple presidents here in the US.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that she became known for uh laterally in her career was interviewing people and doing it in such a way that really got to their core about what they're all about, and in some cases actually started them crying.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the things that happened is that people would start crying.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And people that she's interviewed, that she got such to the core of what they're all about that they cried during the interview were examples such as Oprah.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick Swayze, the year that he died, remember he died of cancer, pancreatic cancer, I think, 10, 15 years ago.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: The year he died, she interviewed Patrick Swayze, and he was he was level as anything and straightforward.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And she asked a couple of questions and he started tearing up.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So Patrick Swayze, Alan, Alan de Generous, uh, General Norman Storm and Schwarzkopf, right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever thought that General Schwarzkopf would be someone that Barbara Walters could ask some questions of and get to cry.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then another one is Ringo Starr, the drummer for the Beatles.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: She interviewed Ringo Starr and he was again level, and she asked a couple of key questions and he started tearing up.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he even said during the interview, I can't believe I'm, I think the words he used was, I can't believe I'm gonna Barbara fucking Walter this and start crying or something like that.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So he knew, I mean, these people know that she's good at doing that, and yet still she got them to cry during the interview.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure she didn't go out of their way to make them cry, but she wanted to get to the heart of what they're all about.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at the Barbara Walters interviews, now she does a lot of good things, right?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: She's got a great tone of voice.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: She makes people feel comfortable even when she's asking tough questions.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It comes across as not aggressive in any way.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: She does a lot of a mirroring, right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So she'll repeat back words they say as a question and then shut up and listen to what they what they come back as.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when she's asking the tough question, sometimes she drops it in there, but sometimes she really softens it really well so that it isn't so threatening and aggressive when she asks it.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she uses pauses really well, right?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: She just lets the pause hang in the air and let lets the other person fill the pause by answering her questions.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing that she also does very well is she asks short questions.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: She does not ask these long questions.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, in fact, I did some analysis.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I pulled up two of her interviews.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: One recently before she retired with Taylor Swift, who we've we've all uh at least know the name, right?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: If not like the music.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other one was with Michael Jackson back before he died, I think a few years before he died.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So let me give you some stats from these interviews.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one with Taylor Swift, I don't know how long the interview itself was.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it was cut and edited and all the rest of it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: But she asked nine questions in the interview of Taylor Swift, and each question had an average of only 11 words in the question, right?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So some a little bit longer, some a little bit shorter.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the average words per question that she asked was only 11 words.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them were single, some of them were a bit longer, but that's where she was, right?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another one, Michael Jackson's one.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a longer interview, much more in-depth.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a tough interview as well, because she wanted to get to some pretty important topics and have them open up about things.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: In that interview, she asked 41 questions off Michael Jackson.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly enough, the average number of words per question was 12.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So pretty much the same as the one that she did with Taylor Swift.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if if she plans it that way or she did plan it that way, or or what, but you know, she's she's asking really telling questions with a real economy of words.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Only 12 words in each question.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in the Michael Jackson interview, it was interesting because he had she had to use a lot of softening to try and get those tough questions in there.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: For example, one of the questions, she started off by saying, I don't want this to sound insulting.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she went on to ask him about why he was so weird.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So she she kind of, you know, I think one of her questions was 57 words long, one was 43 words long.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: She was trying to soften these, uh, you know, what could be perceived as aggressive questions or at least tough questions for someone like Michael Jackson, but still have him sit there and want to answer them, right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So even with those longer ones where she's doing a lot of softening, her average was 12 words in each question.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she gets her interviewees to talk, she gets them to go into depth, she gets them to open up about what it is she wants them to open up about.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she's a skilled, skilled interviewer of some pretty tough people over the years.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: You remember the names I mentioned.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things she does really well is ask these short questions.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does it mean for us then?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: It means that instead of, as I was saying before, asking a long, fluffy question, we should be practicing asking really short ones.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: We need to practice asking the short ones.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of giving multiple choice answers to our questions that we're asking, stop, right?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Stop after asking the question.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Feel yourself just clam up and you know, whether you have to grip your arm or squeeze your knee or something that says, I'm gonna ask this question, I'm gonna shut up, right?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna give all the answers.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of giving an explanation about the question after you've asked it, again, just stop, right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Catch yourself and practice asking these questions where you're ready to stop after asking the key question.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of asking a ton of follow-on questions, the what about this and about that, and then this and then that, and then da-da-da-da.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, again, stop after asking the main question.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you look at the examples I've given here, three of them just require us to ask a good question and stop, right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: We just have to catch ourselves of just stopping.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the real trick to this is two things.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: One is be clear on the killer questions that we want to ask.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So get really good at knowing what those are, and that will give you the confidence to ask them in a way like that, right?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then practice them so that you're able to ask them really effectively and not get caught in these traps.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: So figure out what the right questions are, the killer questions are.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel like they're too long, you know, how can you shorten it?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: What's the way to get rid of some of the fluff and get it right down to the question?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then make sure you keep practicing and practicing, practicing.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the takeaway from this is don't waste time, don't waste the most important part of the sales cycle, the discovery, we're building credibility, we're understanding our prospect and whether there's a deal there to be had and they've got problems that we can solve.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Don't spoil that, don't waste that time by doing it wrong.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Master the skill of asking short but hard-hitting questions.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do so, you'll be more credible, effective, and prospects will want to work with you.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe in your favorite podcast player and leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Ratings and reviews are one of the most important factors when people decide whether to a download and listen to a podcast, and also when the search engines are looking for podcasts when you search for sales podcasts.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So please go to Apple Podcasts and leave a rating and review.