Better Sales Start with Asking ‘Why?’
The following is adapted from Demand-Side Sales 101.
Salespeople are used to asking yes and no questions:
“Do you like this product?”
“Can you see yourself with this?”
“Do you want to buy my product?”
In a way, it’s all about the business, and the mantra from Field of Dreams — “If you build it, he will come” — applies. It’s up to the product team to build a product full of features, and it’s up to the marketing and sales teams to sell that product and push the numbers up. But there’s one question companies don’t usually ask customers when selling or when developing their offering.
That question is, “Why?”
It may seem like a fuzzy question, sounding more like psychology than business. But here’s the issue: businesses always want to add new features and benefits in the belief that it will push them ahead of the competition. If their battery offers a 3% longer charge, we have to do 5%.
Businesses get so focused on the little things that they don’t really get what people are trying to do. People have real problems in their lives, both large and small, and they need to overcome those problems. To succeed, you need to get to the root of the progress that people are trying to make by asking: “Why?” But there’s a specific way to do it right — let’s dive into it.
The Five Whys
When I say you need to ask why, I’m talking about a specific strategy called the Five Whys, which is a long-tested method of getting the right answers from a person.
I learned the technique when I was eighteen years old and interning at Ford in Japan. It was developed in the 1970s by Sakichi Toyoda, founder of Toyota, and is still used today.
Here’s how it works: When a problem — any problem — occurs, you should take a step back and ask “why?” up to five times to find the source of the problem you’re trying to solve. Each answer gives you more and more detail and gets you closer to the root of the problem.
Let’s observe the following Q&A with a customer to see how it works:
- Customer: “I need a drill because I need to make a hole.”
- You: “Why do you need to make a hole?”
- Customer: “I need a hole because I want a plug.”
- You: “Why do you want a plug?”
- Customer: “I need a plug because I want a lamp.”
- You: “Why do you want a lamp?”
- Customer: “Because it’s hard to see, and I want to be able to read better.”
Technically that was only three whys, but it was enough to arrive at the root of the problem. The customer doesn’t really need a drill. He needs an iPad or a Kindle to read in low light.
Asking ‘Why’ Points You in the Right Direction
Here’s the problem: most companies, when asked for a drill, will sell a drill. They never get to the Kindle because they don’t ask why enough times. They sit in boardrooms thinking of their product’s features and benefits and don’t see how it fits in their customers’ lives.
You can’t design your product into a customer’s life and the progress they are trying to make. You have to understand their definition of progress and design your product or service around it. People don’t buy products; they “hire” them every time they use it to solve a problem or issue that they’re having. If the product doesn’t live up to their expectations, the customer will fire it and search for something else.
This is called demand-side sales, as opposed to supply-side sales. With supply-side sales, businesses focus on the product or service and its features and benefits. Demand-side sales, on the other hand, starts with taking a hard look at how your products and services fit into people’s lives and the outcomes they are seeking.
Supply-side and demand-side are totally separate from each other, but you need them both to make a business work, and both approaches start with understanding demand. When you talk to customers, seek to understand them at a very deep level. You do this by asking customers detailed questions; when the answers aren’t detailed enough, you pull out the Five Whys.
The Five Whys may seem awkward, but they’re time-tested for getting real, substantive answers out of people. Use it often, and you’ll start selling drills and Kindles.
For more advice on asking why to achieve better sales, you can find Demand-Side Sales 101 on Amazon. https://amzn.to/32sjAMI
Bob Moesta is a teacher, builder, entrepreneur, and co-founder at The Re-Wired Group, a design firm in Detroit, Michigan. Bob has developed & launched over 3,500 products and sold everything from design services, software, and houses to consumer electronics and investment services. He’s an adjunct lecturer at Kellogg School at Northwestern University, lectures on innovation at Harvard and MIT, and enjoys mentoring at incubators. Greg Engle is a co-founder at the Re-Wired Group. Since the beginning of his career, helping people make progress has been part of Greg’s DNA. He’s worked in everything from food services and retailing, to construction, software, and now consulting services. Greg’s a native Detroiter and enjoys volunteering in the community, especially in local ice hockey leagues.
