Asking Why

"Why" is often the ideal open-ended question. It can open up new avenues of information that we hadn’t even considered.

For example, I was working with a client to negotiate the renewal of a contract with one of his large customers. We had pretty much agreed on the renewal pricing and all the other terms and conditions when the client brought up and objected to the 3% annual increase that we had included in the contract.

There are a number of ways that we could have responded. We could’ve taken a firm position and said,

•  “We have to have the 3%.”

Or we could have said to him,

•  “What would you propose?”

and thus indicate that we were prepared to perhaps negotiate a concession on that matter.

Or we could have come right out and proposed a 2% increase.

Instead, we did something that he found totally unexpected. We asked him why. He told us that we ought to at least be able to develop 3% of savings per year and he felt that we should not have any escalator at all in the contract. We explained that 80% of our costs were labor costs and that in order to hire and retain good people we had to keep our salaries current.

He then said

•  “Well what if inflation is below 3%? That would not be fair.”

We agreed that of course we wanted to be “fair,” and so we agreed to use the Consumer Price Index instead of the 3%.

By asking the question why we were able to uncover his cost-saving reasoning and show why it wasn’t applicable and then, when he backtracked into a “fair and logical” discussion, we were ready with the Consumer Price Index.