The Question Master
It’s time to become the Question Master.
While asking questions might be seen as less confident to the traditional eye, in negotiations it’s quite the opposite:
asking questions is one of the most powerful tactics in
building confidence.
Asking thoughtful, open-ended questions is a crucial step in gaining understanding in any negotiation. Never forget that the more information you have, the more confident you become:
Confident you are meeting the other side’s needs.
Confident you know their motivations.
Confident you’ve exhausted multiple options.
Confident you’re bringing sound deals to the table.
Lot’s of times asking the right question(s) can lead you to all of that ^ !
However, I’m not going to lie, sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what question to ask and when to ask it. So, to help ignite your question mastery, I’ve created a list of my go-to negotiation questions and bucketed them out accordingly for you:
Questions to gather more information.
Generally, these questions shouldn’t be threatening to the other side since they are being used simply to gain understanding. I advise starting the negotiation with these and using a sincere tone while you’re at it.
Could you summarize why you’re here today?
What are you hoping to get out of our conversation?
What would you say matters most to you?
Would you explain your position in more detail?Questions to test positions:
Generally, these questions should help confirm the other side’s interests by giving them something to react to.
How do you feel about…?
Would you rather…?Questions to elicit potential solutions:
Generally, these questions take more time to master because most of us like to come up with the solution all on our own – no help from the other side. But a confident negotiator knows that most deals get done through a win – win lens, in which case we need to make sure the deal fits with both sides.
How may we…?
How do you see us working together?
What would make you move forward with the deal?
As you can see, there is a common thread among all of the questions: they require your counterpart to answer more than just yes or no. If you take on thing from this post, it’s that open-ended questions give you extreme leverage. You’re now armed with more information to make a sound deal.
Cheers + Happy Negotiating,
The Female Negotiator