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Never Ask for a Yes or a No

by Tom Hopkins    

Discovery questions are so simple and obvious that we tend to overlook their pitfalls. “May I help you?” “No, I'm just looking.”

Many people on the retail level ask that question and get that answer at least 50 times a day for years — and never stop asking it. The day they decide to stop asking that say-no question, is the day they qualify themselves for a more advanced selling position.

Sometimes the best discovery question in a given situation doesn’t end with a question mark. It comes out like a statement but it gets the answer the salesperson wants more often than the bad question will.

“Good morning. If you have any questions, please let me know. In the meantime, feel free to look around all you like.”

The first rule of discovery questioning is: never ask a say-no question. This is an important concept. What is a say-no question? A say-no question is any question that can be answered by a yes or a no.

If you give them that choice, you stack the odds against yourself. People will pick no over yes between 51% and 99% of the time when they're given that choice by a salesperson.


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