In my early sales training days, I must have memorized every Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar cassette (cough- yes, cassettes). One of my favorite take-aways from these tapes was ‘How do you mean?’.
Not just in sales, but also buying and raising my kids, I often asked that question. It’s a question that often reveals what a person is trying to relay to me. It also has saved me from myself more than I want to admit. How so? From me assuming I know what my customer/friend/child is thinking.
Recently, I have run into a similar statement through Ninja Selling. The statement is “Tell me more about that”. This variation on trying to find out more of what a person is saying has helped me understand many things that I was either clueless about or thought something was missing in what is being said.
‘How do you mean?’ is a way to get a new definition or restatement of what is not understood. ‘Tell me more about that’, to me, is more universal and can be used in both personal and professional conversations. When asking someone how their day has gone and they say something like “I’m having a great day! My phone is ringing and I have plans for mountain biking after work.” ‘Tell me more about that’ leads to a richer conversation, and often I find myself more fully connecting with the other person because they expand the conversation.
In sales, some systems teach us to ask more questions. Sometimes this is invasive, and is not as universal as our sales trainers lead us to believe. Questions are great, but I’d rather hear more story, more detail, more about what the thoughts behind answers really are.
In the end, my goal is to problem solve and move a situation forward. Using both ‘How do you mean?’ and ‘Tell me more about that’ have helped me achieve more success with the goals of clients, family, and friends. I have found them to be very helpful in disagreements. Even more so, it has increased the entertainment factor that happens at Happy Hours.
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