A valuable business development skill is questioning.
Through our extensive survey work, a considerable number of clients of professional service firms report that their professional advisers don't take enough time to find out about their business and its problems, nor do they show great interest when the client attempts to open up communication beyond the current matter or project at hand.
By contrast, the majority of professionals believe that they already have excellent questioning skills. After listening to clients all day, and fire off questions constantly.
You may have to work hard to overcome a tendency to use questions in a way that feels to the client like interrogation or cross examination: best courtroom technique doesn't win business.
In the personal marketing context, effective questioning is different. It is about:
- discovering needs
- surveying problems
- getting to what's important to the client or prospective client.
There are three main types of questioning: closed, open, and probe questioning.
Closed questions are answered in a syllable or two: yes or no. E.g. "Do you ever seek legal advice?" They yield quick information, but hardly complete.
Open questions lead to a longer response. E.g. "Would you tell me about the occasions when you seek legal advice?" They are useful in collecting information and opinions.
Probing questions encourage elaboration on a response to an open questions. E.g. "Why don't you seek legal advice with your distribution agreements and bad debts?" Use probes to clarify a response, and to find out about underlying views and motivations.
To uncover needs, avoid closed questions. Ask plenty of open questions, and follow these with appropriate probes.
When you're questioning, increase empathy and rapport by adopting you client's vocabulary - use his or her terms where appropriate.
Be sure to ask about the impact of the situation, too: is this a make or break predicament? Find out exactly how important this problem is to your client.
Polite and thoughtful questioning is a convincing way of expressing you genuine interest and concern, and will help you to understand exactly what's on your client's mind, and why.
Effective questioning also means dealing with the important question of price. Price is almost always a question. If unspoken, you may have to raise it.
While price is an important question, only in a few market segments is price the most important issue. Forewarned about price, most clients are satisfied if they're convinced they're getting value for money.
Research reveals that talking about fees is the third biggest stress factor for lawyers. If you're among the masses of professionals who feel uneasy talking about price, work on answering price questions until you can deal with them comfortably and constructively. Be prepared for the desensitisation process to take some time and training !
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