Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 68: Why you need to ask one question at a time

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68: Why you need to ask one question at a time · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Great questions yield great answers, unless, of course, you screw up asking the question in the first place.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Find out how to avoid one mistake in this episode.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite-sized sales podcast, where we believe that you don't need to take time out of the field or off the phones, stuck in a classroom, in order to get great sales and sales leadership training, and that taking bite-sized steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve your results.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and I'm using my 20 plus years in B2B sales to bring you simple, actionable ideas that you can use every day to help you get better.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the tip for today, this episode is sponsored by Sales Bluebird.
• 1:29
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• 1:36
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• 1:51
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• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to episode 68 of the podcast.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is uh a super simple but super effective tip this morning.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably seen this with an inexperienced or even perhaps a nervous sales rep.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: They know the great question they want to go and ask.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: They ask it, but then they throw up all over the person they're meeting with, the prospect, with five follow-on questions before the person has even the chance to think, never mind, answer the first one, right?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they go in and say, tell me about uh this impact on your business.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, especially on this, and what about that?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then tell me what it means for the HR team and then the finance team, right?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they just kind of get what might have been a really meaningful first question lost by just snowballing in with all these other things, all the follow-on questions, and confuse everyone and lose them.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the same thing happens when we're working with our reps one-on-one, or you know, in any sort of you know, review situation, forecast or or pipeline review, you know, the temptation sometimes is to fall in that habit of saying, Well, tell me about this, especially this bit, and then tell me how you handled that.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And did this ever come up, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you're in that that same thing.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Happens all the time.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So in uh in the book, uh The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stenier, he addresses this.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let me read straight from the book.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: My friend Matt May, author of In Pursuit of Elegance and the Laws of Subtraction, tells a story at the time he first drove through the center of Paris.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Swept into the traffic circle around the landmark Arc de Triomphe, he noticed quickly that this was not your typical rotary.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: With twelve streets feeding into the roundabout, the normal rules were reversed.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here the incoming traffic had right of way, while the traffic already in the circle had to wait its turn.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Even though the system works, those crazy French people, Matt's experience was one of white knuckle panic as cars seemed to come at him from all sides.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes being on the receiving end of someone with a pocket full of questions can be like a moment of Parisian driving.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Questions come hurling at you left and right, there's no time to answer any of them, and you're feeling dazed and confused.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Some call it drive-by questioning, and rather than feeling like a supportive conversation, it has the unpleasant vibe of an interrogation.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh the coaching habit by Michael Bungay Stanier.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: A great book for anyone who wants to take on coaching principles and coaching ideas.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the question for you from this is is do you do this?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, have you caught yourself?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Can you remember yourself doing it recently?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge that you do it, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge that it happens, and you know, we're all human, so these are natural things sometimes for us to do.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge that you do it and you want to change it, and practice not doing it and do you know, practice this everywhere, practice this in your private life, in your personal life, as well as your work life.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, get used to ask asking single questions, concise, and then shutting up and letting the other person go.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll see the the results that you'll get as opposed to bombarding them like the Parisian Randabut.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe one thing to do, actually, if you're open to this and you're vulnerable with your team, is if you know you do this, say, listen, you know, I know I do this, and it's it's probably super frustrating for you, and it's not making for an effective conversation.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: If I do it again, please stop me and let me know that I've done that and give me the chance to rephrase my question or give me the chance to start again.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So because I want us to have a meaningful conversation.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe having that sort of conversation with your team, if you do find you do a lot of this uh the drive-by question that Michael talks about, maybe together you get to the point where you'll have more effective conversations and they won't feel like they're being bombarded all the time.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's the the Parisian roundabout of questions, the the onslaught that happens that completely confuses the person you're asking questions of, that we need to stop.
• 6:11
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• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: It will mean the world to me, but more importantly, for that one person, it may well transform how they lead and also their results in the coming quarters and years.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: It will take you just 20 seconds.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is click the share icon in your podcast ad and follow the prompts.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I need your suggestions, please.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a topic you want me to cover or just want to get in touch, simply email me at upside at unstoppable.do.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's upside at unstoppable.do.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now to wrap up this episode, training without implementation is just entertainment.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if you heard something today that you want to use, take action right now and keep getting better every single day.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I'm signing off as the great Joe Sexton would by saying, gone to sell.