Listen to Jr tell the funny story of how he and his wife miscommunicate because they didn’t ask better questions.
My wife and I have been married 6, almost 7 years, and early on in our marriage, the first couple of months my wife asked me a question. ” Of the Neopolitan flavors which is your favorite?” I said strawberry and never thought any more about it. But then over the next few weeks every night at 9:15, our snack time, we would have strawberry ice cream. Every night! It went on for weeks.
Finally one day we are in the grocery store. We are standing in the frozen food aisle looking at all of the frozen food options. My wife looked at me and said, “Do you think that maybe just this one time we can have something other than strawberry ice cream?” I said, “YES, PLEASE! I would love to have something other than strawberry. I like strawberry, but my favorite ice cream is chocolate chip cookie dough!”
A couple of weeks later, my wife had a pancreatitis attack and had to go on a bland diet. So we are in the grocery store finding things that she can eat and I can pick out some things that I want to eat. We are going down the potato chip aisle, knowing she can’t have potato chips, I reach up and grab some Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion chips. She gives me a funny look, she said, “why can’t we have those when I can eat them.” I said because you don’t like them, you like the plain Lay’s chips. She said, “NO. I hate them. I would rather have the Sour Cream and Onion, I only bought them because that’s what you always had in your apartment. I thought you loved them!”
We spent so much time trying to figure out what the other person wanted, assuming what the other person liked, that we never asked the question. Does that happen to you? Does it happen in your family or in your business with a client? Do you assume to know what they want or need instead of asking the question? You’ll get a lot farther, you’ll accomplish a lot more, and you’ll hit the target much more often if you ask questions and listen for the answers. You will make a better connection if you ask better questions.