Better Questions, Better Answers

Personal development guru Zig Ziglar invented a technique that would change sales forever. It's called, the obligating question. Here's how it works...

Imagine you are working at a new car dealership and you’ve spent the past hour with a potential customer and he's about to make a decision.

You ask, “So, Mr. Jones, would you like to go with this vehicle right here?” 

Immediately, you see the apprehension on his face and you know what’s coming next. You’ve been doing this for a while.

“Don't get me wrong. I like it. The price is pretty good. But I just can’t see myself buying a red car.”

Hot dog. It just so happens that you have the exact same car in blue sitting around the corner. When you tell Mr. Jones about it, he immediately counters with another objection.

“Well, blue is definitely more my color. But I really had my mind set on a hatchback, not a sedan.” 

This could go on forever. You sense this guy can come up with an infinite number of objections, so you decide to take a page our of Zig Ziglar’s book. You ask an obligating question. The thing that makes an obligating question so powerful is that if the customer answers in the affirmative, they have no choice but to buy from you.

“Mr. Jones, if I told you that I have that same car, in a hatchback, in blue, in our back lot and that it’s listed at $500 less than this vehicle right here, would you take delivery on that car today?”

Boom. Welcome to commission-ville.

The obligating question is so powerful because it forces the potential buyer to wrestle with their true opinions and beliefs about the purchase. When posed with regular questions, the customer can simply counter each one with a new objection and never have to ask themselves…do I really want this car? Zig Ziglar knew the sales process is not about the sales person, it’s about the customer. Smart.

I find that Life Design is a lot like buying a new car.

There’s something that we want to change about our lives, we have a hunch about how we might go about it, and yet we don’t take action. Instead, we come up with objection after objection about why we shouldn’t do it. Why it won’t work. I would go on a diet, but I’ll wind up quitting at some point and gain back all the weight I lost, so why bother suffering? Or…I should look for a new job, but how could I possibly find something that pays as well, doing something that I actually want to do?

Where is Zig Ziglar when we need him?

Well, he’s not here, so let me try. What if I told you that you could stick to your diet forever and keep the weight off? What if I told you that you could find a new job that would pay just as well doing exactly what you love? Would that be enough to make you do something towards your goal? No? Why not? Don’t you trust me?

No. You don’t. Not about this, anyway. The obligating question won’t work in this situation because I don’t actually have a blue hatchback sitting around the corner. There’s no guarantee that I can deliver on the promise if you answer ‘yes’ to my obligating question.

Instead of an obligating question, we need an empowering question. We need a question that we can ask ourselves that doesn’t close down the possibility for action, but instead opens up space for new potential actions. The quality of the questions that we ask ourselves define the problem solving approaches that are available to us.

Did you realize that you’re asking yourself questions? Probably not. Most of us don’t. Our conscious mind tends to skip right over that part and focus on ACTION. Doing. Or not doing, as the case may be. The questions remain implicit in our subconscious. If the questions are disempowering, then it’s highly unlikely that we’ll take action.

At the end of the post I’ll offer some examples of disempowering questions as well as some empowering alternatives to illustrate the point. In the video portion, I’ll walk you through a brief exercise to help you ensure you’re working from empowering questions.

So…What questions are you asking yourself?

Prosperous Journey,

-zog

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