Inadvertent Question Grading - Great Demo! and Doing Discovery

Inadvertent Question Grading

Here’s another reason to pay attention to your habits.

 

“I could have been a Rhodes Scholar, except for my grades.”

– Duffy Daugherty

 

I was in a demo as a prospect and my team was peppering the vendor with questions. The rep’s response to each question was “Oh, great question!” followed by answers of varying lengths:

“Can it do X?”

“Great Question! Yes, absolutely…!”

 

“How do you change the Y?”

“Great Question! Here, I’ll show you…!”

 

“Is there a way to do Z?”

“Great Question! Certainly, you simply click here and…”

 

This continued for a while.

 

I then asked a question about pricing and licensing.

The response was, “Oh, good question…”

 

After that long string of “Great Question!” responses, how do you think I felt after receiving what was clearly a lower grade for my question?

“Good question,” indeed!

 

Moral: Avoid grading questions, either consciously or unconsciously.

 

You’ll find 35 more stories and lessons learned like this in my new book “Suspending Disbelief!

https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy

And you’ll find more details on when and how to elegantly and effectively park questions in Chapter 8 “Managing Time and Questions” of Great Demo! here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

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