Here are 7 questions you can ask people on your buying committee to find out why they aren’t *exactly* pushing back on what you’re selling but also aren’t saying, “Shut up and take my money.”
1. What was going on in your world that led you to ____?
2. Where were you when you first learned about ____?
3. What do you remember about your first impressions of ____?
4. Who was the first person you talked to about ____?
5. What do you remember from that conversation?
6. When did you first involve your finance or purchasing team?
7. What was going on that day?
______
What makes these questions work well is that each one helps you understand why people are doing what they’re doing – but not one starts with the word “Why.”
Best case scenario, questions phrased to start with the word “Why” ask people to understand, interpret, and communicate their motivations or the motivations of others. Not only that, but “why” forces folks to do this in real time, in front of an audience (you), often without any prior reflection the many factors that may or may not have anything to do with you.
Worst case scenario, hearing “why” sounds like an accusation and puts you at odds with your conversation partner for the rest of the conversation. Christopher Voss shared this lesson from years of negotiation experience in his book “Never Split The Difference” (image below is from that book).
So. If starting with “why” subverts your goals, but you still want to find out why…
…no one except your champion cares about you
…someone said they wanted to move forward but kept moving the meeting
…someone’s boss delayed reviewing the proposal for 2 weeks
…your champions’ boss said budget is fine but then told you they have to check on budget
…a product is only popular with 1 or 2 stakeholders when you built features to appeal to 4
…then start your research questions with who, what, where, or when.
These starting prompts reshape the conversation. Instead of asking someone to synthesize, interpret, or defend, you ask them to remember a story. You ask about characters, plot, setting, and timeline.
This phrasing is how you learn that…
…the marketing materials your team built to get stakeholders 3 and 4 onboard haven’t been going out, so these folks never learned about the features you built for them
…folks talk about ROI for themselves differently than they do for finance, so you need to have a few different ways of describing it, too
…your champion has developed a reputation for bringing wild ideas home from events, so you have to connect with the rest of your buying committee to overcome that narrative
…another stakeholder wants what you’re selling even more than your champion, but they’re not involved in the deal early enough to influence budget
When you learn *what* is happening vs a stakeholder’s POV on *why* it’s happening, you can interpret *what* matters to you and *why.*