Even the most seasoned sales veterans sometimes struggle to get more than a few questions into the process of general discovery before quickly trying to push products. To improve your success in this area, break those discovery questions down into four subcategories:

• Marketing questions: How do you go to market? How do you distinguish yourself from your competitors? What are your biggest competitive challenges?
• Operational questions:

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

• Workforce planning and workforce analysis: Which employees are eligible for retirement in the next two to five years? Do they possess critical skills? Which jobs and skill sets will be impacted? How will you replace these skills once these employees retire? What are the critical skills for the future that will need to be recruited or developed?
• Learning management: Do your current training and learning

… [ Read more ]

Authors: James Benton, Rajan Srikanth, Yvonne Herrera
Source: Achieving High Performance in a Rapidly Aging World
Subject: Human Resources Questions

• What’s our purpose as a company? What’s the promise of our brand?
• What do our customers/consumers feel is the most valuable things that we can do for them? (Consider this as the basis of your brand promise.)
• What is the unique value of our organization…the competitive differentiator in our minds and in the minds of our stakeholders?
• Where is our competition coming from and what are their perceived

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Strategy Questions

• Is your company’s infrastructure helping or hindering your company’s …
  M&A options and plans?
  New-product and speed-to-market strategies?
  Efforts to implement new technologies that deliver a more unified, holistic view of your customers?
  Depending on your company’s business strategy in the coming years, a response of “hindering” to any of these questions might put your organization on the defensive when faced with competition from

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Author: Jeff Hughes
Source: Overcoming IT Ambivalence
Subject: IT Questions

• What do current customers say that they LOVE about you?
• What specifically do they say you should improve?
• When was the last time you disappointed them?
• What do they value the most about your company?
• Which specific customers recommend you the most?
• What do they say specifically—in their own words—when they recommend you to others?

Authors: Ben McConnell, Jackie Huba
Source: Top 6 Tips to Understanding Customer Evangelism
Subject: Customer Questions

Ram Charan and Julie Schlosser recommend the best questions every board member and shareholder should ask to get to the heart of what they should know about a company. Ten disarmingly simple questions, “so simple in fact, that we often forget to – or are embarrassed to – ask them.”

1. How does the company make money?
2. Are our customers paying up?
3. What could really hurt – or

… [ Read more ]

Authors: Julie Schlosser, Ram Charan
Source: Ten Questions Every Board Member Should Ask
Subject: Corporate Governance Questions

Revenues and Profitability

• I can identify the products, services, and channels driving my revenue and profit.
• I can rank customers and customer locations by profitability.
• I am automatically alerted when critical costs, such as non-billable overtime rates, fall out of control.
• I know when my sales reps/managers are on target, and I can intervene in time to make a difference.

Customer Relationship Management

• I can identify low-value customers and try to

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Subject: Miscellaneous Questions

Before getting started with a business-continuity plan, CIOs should ask some strategic questions:

Author: Mark Dangelo
Source: Fending Off Disaster
Subject: Business Continuity / Crisis Questions

Gallup has been researching top-performing leaders for more than 40 years. One crucial discovery has been that top performance is strongly correlated to seven main leadership activities or “demands.” Those demands are: visioning, maximizing values, challenging experience, mentoring, building a constituency, making sense of experience, and knowing self.

Focusing each leader’s growth on the seven demands can accelerate leadership development. This artcle outlines the seven … [ Read more ]

Subject: Leadership Questions

• How do I know how much to spend on advertising?
• How do I evaluate the effectiveness of my advertising?
• How can I learn more about my target audience?
• How do I evaluate the efficiency of different media?
• How do I make certain that my ad will pull?
• What’s more important: reach or frequency?
• How do I know which medium works best?
• Should I run a big ad once or several smaller ads

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Advertising Questions