Do you struggle with managing your email inbox?
No.
See – if you were asking that question, you wouldn’t learn much from that answer and it kills off your conversation’s momentum. So how should I ask questions to get non-biased, useful answers?
If there’s one single trick that will help you with getting relevant responses – it’s this: don’t ask yes/no questions.
Instead of asking a question that can be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’, you can always reframe the question. Instead start with how, why, when, where, who. Or “tell me about”. It may feel awkward – and that’s okay. You will probably ask a yes/no question out of habit, and you can interrupt yourself and reword it – that’s okay too.
Here’s what that sounds like:
Do you struggle with managing your email inbox? — Excuse me, let me ask that a different way: “What do you find most challenging about managing your messages?”
and maybe that person will say, “Oh, I don’t get a lot of emails because my company uses Slack” or maybe they’ll say “I get a zillion emails and my inbox is full and I don’t care, I can always search for what I need” and those are totally different answers. But both responses would have said “no” to a yes/no question.
Here’s what that sounds like – watch the video:
There you go! How will you remind yourself ‘don’t ask yes/no questions’ when talking to customers?