That's Interesting, Tell Me More...

Gong research suggests that top reps talk less, ask more questions.

But...it's not the number of questions, it's the question style. Customers spend more time answering these questions.

Top reps don't hop from topic to topic after each answer. They stay on a single thread for three or four turns. They hear something interesting and they pull on it. "Tell me more about that." "What happened next?" "Why do you think that is?" This is what triggers the longer answers -- it forces the buyer to think, not just recite. The rep is demonstrating that they're genuinely engaged, and the buyer responds in kind.

Tim Hurson calls this "staying in the question" -- the discipline of resisting the first adequate answer and continuing to probe. In Think Better, he describes how ideas and insights come in thirds. The first third is obvious, top of mind, what everyone already knows. The second third is more considered, more strained. The third third is where the breakthroughs live -- where you've exhausted the easy answers and are forced to see the problem in an entirely new way. Most reps live in the first third. They get an answer, check the box, and move on. The fifth rep stays. They push into the second third, and then the third. The deepest truths -- the ones that actually determine whether this deal happens -- don't surface until the easy answers are spent.

Questioning is a behavior. Curiosity is the engine that powers it.

You can ask a hundred questions from a checklist without being curious. And prospects can feel the difference. One feels like an interrogation. The other feels like a conversation where someone is actually trying to understand their world.

How do you know that your reps are asking great questions? Inspection? Coaching? Role playing?