One Question to Ask Every Client

By Michael W. McLaughlin

When a client calls you about an issue or problem, it’s natural for you to ask questions, including why the client needs to address the issue. But as you proceed through the sales process, you’ll find that one question in particular, asked at just the right time, can open up your sales conversations and lead to new insights for you and the client.

That question is how does the client know what the problem actually is?

How Do You Know That?

A water bottling company that was plagued with late and missed deliveries to its customers found out the importance of that question firsthand. As complaints about the company’s service grew, the executive team started investigating. After some analysis, the team concluded that poor communication and a lack of shared information between the delivery drivers and warehouse employees were causing the daily schedule to slip.

In response, the company decided to install a delivery scheduling software system to solve the problem, and asked several consultants for help with the project. Instead of jumping into a series of questions about how to implement that solution, one consultant began with this question: “How do you know that is the problem?”

The client could offer only limited factual support for the conclusion, and that stirred everyone’s thinking about the problem. The consultant used that opportunity to uncover what was really amiss.

Why “How” Matters

The best consultants, and the top services sellers, resist the urge to talk about what they will do until they understand how the client identified the problem. They take this approach for three reasons.

First, most clients respect the honest skeptic. Once you accept a client’s assertions at face value, you’ve elected to place the sale above what’s in the client’s best interests. Clients expect some pushback when they advance their conclusions, and your response offers them a way to learn about your skills, perspectives, and ability to communicate.

Second, if you and the client base the definition of the problem on shaky assumptions, everything you do going forward will be unreliable. Without a solid foundation, you can’t be sure if the proposed solution will be successful or miss the mark.

Finally, if your solution doesn’t resolve the problem, don’t look for clients to chalk it up to poor diagnosis on their part; they will hold you accountable.

One of the consultants responding to the water bottling company asked “how” questions for every assertion the client made about the delivery problems. After a long discussion, the clients realized that they still needed to identify the true source of the difficulty. So instead of leaping ahead with the project, they asked for an independent assessment.

Checking All the Angles

The point of asking “how” questions is not to lay waste to a client’s analysis; nor is the intent to showcase your superior analytical skills. Instead, such questions offer an important way for you and the client to clarify the situation and give everyone an idea of how you’d work together.

To be effective, “how” questions should examine a problem from multiple angles. In the case of the water bottling company, the consultant probed six specific areas:

1. How well does it work? For every process, like customer deliveries, there are acceptable and unacceptable levels of performance. Find out how each part of the process performs in terms of that standard, where it works well, and where it needs improvement.
2. How effectively do people and processes work together? Few (if any) business processes work in isolation. Drivers work with warehouse personnel, customers, accounting staff, and others, for example. Ask how well the groups work together.
3. How thoroughly do people understand what to do? It’s common to assume that the people involved with a business process know how to do their jobs. That assumption is often invalid, especially when it comes to handling exceptions to normal procedures. Ask how the level of employee education and training might be impacting results.
4. How appropriate is the work flow design? Often, the way people do their work is outmoded or poorly designed for the needs of customers. Examine how suitable the process is for its intended purpose.
5. How promptly do workers get the help they need? Many process failures result from delays in helping people solve tough problems. An employee may need help with a tricky situation, and might have to hold up operations until it is forthcoming. Ask how the client provides support for exceptions and for problem solving.
6. How satisfied are people with the performance of the processes and systems they use? It’s always instructive to ask people who are directly involved how satisfied they are with the way the work goes. Often, an open-ended question about an individual’s overall satisfaction reveals insights that you may not uncover any other way. The answer often leads you directly to the root of the problem.

By understanding how each of these areas contributes to the problem, you’ll begin to see how complete and accurate the client’s view of the problem actually is.

The Real Answer Is in Your Questions

Once the consultant got the answers to the questions in the six areas above, a much broader definition of the bottler’s delivery issues emerged. It became clear that the benefits of a driver scheduling system could be substantial, but a larger problem would remain: The customer service reps were inadvertently introducing errors into customer order quantities.

As a result, the warehouse workers were loading incorrect orders onto the trucks, which the drivers didn’t discover until they attempted delivery. They had to fix the orders on the fly, leading to delays. The resulting proposal for solving the problem addressed the order processing system as the first step in a project to help the clients improve their customer service performance.

Your best opportunity to demonstrate your competence during the sales process begins with how you manage discussions of the client’s issue. In this case, the consultant earned the right to work with this client by challenging the diagnosis of the problem, being insightful, and starting with that simple question, “How did you come up with that?”