There are certain techniques and strategies that are universal in their application. They work in business, in job search, in daily life, and yet we tend to forget about this and take advantage of their versatility.

Something as simple as asking good questions is an example of a universal application. Asking good questions is very different from merely asking questions. For example, I remember interviewing a person for a sales position and she asked if the job would require working over 40 hours a week. That was not a good question. I also remember a salesperson who asked customer after customer if he had some products that he could bid on. No one said yes, because he was asking them to generate a lot of extra work for very little return.

Unlike the above, good questions can have a favorable impact that helps you sell your product, win the job, or improve communications in your daily life, because it is one of life’s universal applications. The above-noted person who was floundering in sales by asking dumb questions soon produced double-digit revenue gains by asking good questions.

I taught him to ask the next customer we were seeing, 3-M, questions to uncover problems they may have been experiencing in the world of packaging. For example, “Are any of your packaging products failing and causing you to quarantine them?” After asking several more questions of this sort the 3-M engineer looked at me and said, “No one’s asked me these questions before.” He then turned to the salesperson and said, “Here is who you need to see.”

Asking good questions can change the way you are perceived by customers, friends, interviewers, everyone. But if it is such a powerful technique, then why don’t we spend more time refining this skill?

I was coaching someone who was working in real estate, not enjoying it, and looking to find a job outside of this area. During the coaching process he learned what his strengths were, how to articulate them, how to present his accomplishments in stories, and so on. Suddenly his real estate work became more successful and now he is going to re-engage himself in this area. He did not realize it but he was benefiting from some of the universal applications he had learned during job search.

Before he left I taught him one more, a good question that is itself universal in it application. I told him to start his conversations with potential real estate clients by asking one question, “What are your goals?” Because once he knew their goals he could craft a plan to help them achieve them. It would change their perception of him. He would transition from being a realtor to being a member of their team who was trying to help them achieve their hopes and dreams.

He was excited about using this technique, and then I reminded him of some of the other ones he’d learned in job search and how they applied very powerfully to his world of real estate, because they were universal applications. The next one we covered was stories, which I will cover in the next post.