27 Ways To Ask Better Questions…

Asking Better Questions…
Gets You Better Direct Response…

Use presuppositions to get better answers:
- How could we MOST EASILY … expand our market, etc.?
- How could we MOST SAFELY … invest for maximum returns in 2014?
- How could we HAVE THE MOST FUN … getting to know new people?
‘How’ questions tend to initiate action.
‘Why’ questions tend to create judgement.
‘What, Where, When, Who’ questions tend to set the scene or environment.
Well-formed questions are:
- Positive (What do I want? as opposed to What don’t I want?)
- Personably Actionable (What can I do? vs Why won’t he/she change?)
- Robust (What else might be affected if we achieve this?)
- Present tense Evidence (Who, where, when, with whom do you want this?)

Somewhere I read that…

The Average Child Asks 125 Questions a Day…
But… the Average Adult Asks Only Six …

All too soon children learn to stop asking questions that Mommy and Daddy can’t answer. The same thing happens later in school with teachers. In fact, in school we learn answers to questions we never asked. Unfortunately, you cannot simply tell people answers to questions they haven’t asked – they won’t be able to hear the answers. The end result is that we begin to shy away from questions.

We lose our curiosity and inquisitiveness. And yet, questions are the primary way we learn.

Greek philosopher Socrates taught by asking questions, and through his questions, directed his students’ focus, causing them to come up with their own answers.

So how do we relearn to think again in a creative, stimulating way – to question? Roger Schank suggest that we consider these three things:

You must be asked questions either by yourself, by others, or by situations you encounter.
Those questions must be out of the ordinary. If you have been asked these questions before, you won’t have to think.
Someone whom you respect must evaluate your answer – and you must defend your answer as well.

Tip! ~ Pick a Favorite Question and …

… begin asking it in places you didn’t ask it before, particularly questions that everyone seems to know the answer to:

At school
At work
With your parents, family
With your friends

Tip! ~ Start Keeping Track of The Questions…
Those Which You Ask Habitually…

… those questions you are comfortable with. These are the questions which direct your focus, and therefore, how you think and how you feel.

Reflect on the kinds of answers they generate – and how those answers affect the quality and focus of your life.

To change your life, your focus, your direction, you must change the questions which you ask habitually – both of other people and of yourself.

Tony Robbins Suggests Your Questions
Accomplish Three Specific Things:

Questions immediately change what you’re focusing on and therefore how you feel. Learning to ask empowering questions in moments of crisis is a critical skill.
Questions change what you delete. Because it is difficult to concentrate on a number of things at one time, your brain constantly tries to prioritize what to pay attention to – and more importantly, what not to pay attention to, i.e., what to delete.
Questions change the resources available to you. They affect your beliefs and thus what you consider possible or impossible. The words you use in your questions, particularly the habitual ones, put presuppositions in place in your mind and in your answers. Our beliefs frequently affect the questions we’ll even consider.

Tip! ~ Learn to Ask ‘Why?’ Again…

Today, as part of the quality and continuous improvement process in many companies, employees are being taught to ask ‘Why?’ five times. In root cause analysis processes, the five Why’s essentially ‘peel back the onion’ to expose the underlying cause.

Gerald Nadler and Shozo Hibino have put forth the ‘Purposes Principle’ for breakthrough thinking: Finding the right purpose to work on involves thinking about purposes behind the problem at different levels and asking ‘Why?’ repeatedly to expand the problem into a larger mess of interrelated problems. Accepting a problem as stated almost always means that the beliefs, constraints and experiences already associated with it are accepted as well. If you expand your thinking beyond the most immediate, obvious purpose and think in broader terms of what you want to accomplish, your solution options will explode.

– Ask questions that expand purposes.

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Blog post link: http://bit.ly/Better-Questions
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“Always Be Marketing”
~Jonathan Dune
Direct Response Marketing Consultant | Copywriter
JonathanDuneDotCom
Two Comma Copy Pty Ltd
(Located in Avalon… just north of Sydney suburbs and
sometimes at my office in La Jolla (San Diego) California in the States)
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27 Ways To Ask Better Questions…