Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business, and Influence Others [Hardcover]

Andrew Sobel (Author), Jerold Panas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 2012

An arsenal of powerful questions that will transform every conversation

Skillfully redefine problems. Make an immediate connection with anyone. Rapidly determine if a client is ready to buy. Access the deepest dreams of others. Power Questions sets out a series of strategic questions that will help you win new business and dramatically deepen your professional and personal relationships. The book showcases thirty-five riveting, real conversations with CEOs, billionaires, clients, colleagues, and friends. Each story illustrates the extraordinary power and impact of a thought-provoking, incisive power question. To help readers navigate a variety of professional challenges, over 200 additional, thought-provoking questions are also summarized at the end of the book.

In Power Questions you’ll discover:

• The question that stopped an angry executive in his tracks
• The sales question CEOs expect you to ask versus the questions they want you to ask
• The question that will radically refocus any meeting
• The penetrating question that can transform a friend or colleague’s life
• A simple question that helped restore a marriage

When you use power questions, you magnify your professional and personal influence, create intimate connections with others, and drive to the true heart of the issue every time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A powerful question can turn a tepid conversation into a revealing encounter, as demonstrated by Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas in their engaging new book, Power Questions...first-rate and very helpful.”—The Globe and Mail

“Power Questions...is already my favorite, keep-it-close-at-hand business book. I read the book in a single sitting and within 24 hours landed a speaking engagement by asking a few of the “337 Essential Questions” that Sobel and Panas have carefully matched to 35 common business-related situations.”—Forbes.com

“Forget trying to be brilliant or clever on your feet to sell a prospect. Power questions will refocus meetings, stop people in their tracks and help you win new business.”—American Express.com, “Top 10 Business Books for the Summer”

“An inspirational read...strongly recommended”—Midwest Library Journal

The greatest gift you can give someone is to ask what he or she thinks, and truly listen to the answer. Sobel and Panas turn this powerful idea into practical, compelling advice by asking questions that reveal surprising, often life-changing, answers.—Ralph W. Shrader, Chairman and CEO, Booz Allen Hamilton

This book is amazing. It packs a wallop. It gets you inside the mind and heart of a person.  I strongly recommend it.—John Schlifske, Chairman and CEO, Northwestern Mutual

Power Questions is easy to pick up, but hard to put down. Andrew and Jerry give a veritable playbook for building stronger relationships. Whether you read it cover-to-cover or just open a page to prepare for a new meeting, it’s a valuable resource no matter where you are in your career.—Frank D'Souza, CEO, Cognizant

Read this remarkable book and keep it handy, because these questions have the power to enrich every segment of your life.—Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager^® and Leading at a Higher Level

Reading Power Questions is like listening in to the most amazing array of private conversations with CEOs, politicians, religious authorities, and entrepreneurs. A joyous read.—David Sable, Global CEO, Young & Rubicam

Andrew Sobel and Jerry Panas have developed the thought-provoking thesis in their book of the importance of asking questions to tailor advice and build relationships. Their work is illustrated with plenty of examples, and their premise becomes more convincing page by page.—Sir Winfried Bischoff, Chairman, Lloyds Banking Group

From the Inside Flap

Unlock the power of great questions

What do you think most engages a prospective client, or makes a lasting impression on someone you've just met? The popular belief is that we win business by being clever and quick on our feet, and that our brilliance—saying just the right thing—is what attracts others. But as Power Questions compellingly demonstrates, knowing the right question to ask is actually far more important than having a ready answer.

Power Questions can immediately help you win more business, deepen your relationships, and connect with people more rapidly than you ever thought possible. It shows you how to use thought-provoking questions to engage prospects and uncover their most pressing issues. It gives you the tools to get inside the heart and mind of anyone you meet. In thirty-five inspiring chapters, you'll meet a fascinating group of men and women. Through these riveting, real-life stories, you'll learn exactly how each power question was used and the impact it had. You'll discover how you can transform your daily conversations—and even someone's life—through powerful questions that anyone can master.

You'll learn how Steve Jobs asked a single motivating question that led to breakthrough results in developing the Macintosh personal computer. You'll see how an unasked question cost a major company a huge project bid. Other powerful examples include:

• The question that stopped an angry executive in his tracks
• The sales question CEOs expect you to ask, versus the questions they want you to ask
• The question that can radically refocus any meeting
• A simple question that helped restore a marriage
• The penetrating question that can transform the life of a friend or colleague

Put these questions to use and you will connect more deeply with your clients, drive quickly to the heart of problems, and unlock your professional and personal influence in unexpected and delightful ways.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (February 7, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1118119630
• ISBN-13: 978-1118119631
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (150 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #31 in Books > Business & Investing > Skills > Communications
  • #84 in Books > Business & Investing > Personal Finance

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Do you want to thrive at what you do? This book is for you. February 8, 2012

By Kenny Jahng - Twitter @kkcoolj

Format:Hardcover

What a great read. Andrew Sobel takes on the universal truth: "Good questions are often far more powerful than answers" in this enjoyable, practical and challenging book. What I loved about this book is that it helps to address the question: Would you rather engage with someone who's a boring mega phone, a mute or just plain awkward -- or someone that's always drawing you into meaningful dialogue? In my personal and professional relationships, it can be hard to start or carry on a conversation beyond the introductions and salutations. This book provides meaty prescriptions for being able to turn up the engagement meter in your conversations. What's great is that while many of the lessons in the book may be applicable to personal & social circumstances, Power Questions really gives concrete advice for turbo charging professional client-advisor relationships.

The book present 35 distinct chapters that cover various approaches with real-life anchor stories to demonstrate the questions you should be asking. Where most books stop, but Power Questions keeps delivering is the section included at the end of each chapter, "Suggestions for How To Use This Question." Sobel offers some addition advice around (A) When to use the question (B) Alternative versions of the question and (C) Follow-up questions you may use in the conversation.

And as if that's not enough, there's a final chapter that's a fun, but one of the most practical sections of the book -- there's hundreds of more questions (293 to be exact) sorted into 9 buckets that you can use in your client relationships.

This is one of those books where you can put the advice into action, well before you reach the end of the book. I found myself trying to employ the new perspectives gained each time before I picked-up the book again for the next chapter. Loved it.

38 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If you don't know the right questions to ask and how/when to ask them, you'll never find the right answers you need. March 22, 2012

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I do not know of another business thinker, indeed another person, who asks better questions than Andrew Sobel does and that is a talent he has developed over several decades. Each of his three previously published books was written in direct response to an especially serious business question and his latest book is no exception: How to build relationships, win new business, and influence others? Sobel and co-author Jerold Panas offer and discuss 337 "essential" questions that can obtain information that will help to achieve these three separate but interdependent objectives.

How so "interdependent"? If an organization does not build and constantly strengthen relationships with everyone involved in the given enterprise, it will lose its most valuable employees, clients, and allies and, for the same reasons, fail to replace them. True, this company "influences others" but in all he wrong ways.

Sobel and Panas organize their material within 35 chapters that contain a total of 42 questions (five in Chapter 35) within a narrative significantly enhanced by anecdotes that illustrate the power of questions that can either strengthen or weaken a relationship, increase or reduce the chances of achieving a desired objective. Then 293 additional "Power" questions are provided in the final section, "Not Just for Sunday."

I really appreciate how cleverly Sobel and Panas frame their material in a reader-friendly fashion. For example, they pose a question and then suggest how and when to use that question most effectively. One of my personal favorites is "Is this the best you can do?" apparently one that many others such as Steve Jobs and Henry Kissinger have frequently posed. Sobel and Panas note that use of this question should be reserved for occasions "when it is especially desirable for someone to do their very best and push themselves to their strained and stretched limits." I agree. They then suggest when specifically to use the question and alternative versions of the question, and alternative versions of it. This is a clever format repeated throughout the book. Here are three other "Power Questions" that caught my eye:

"What did you learn from that?" (Chapter 16)
Comment: Every setback (don't call it a failure) should be a valuable learning opportunity.

"Can we start over?" (Chapter 8)
Comment: What isn't working, what isn't happening, will often reveal what will. The Lakota suggest never feeding a dead horse.

"What do you wish you could do more of?"
Comment: The best career advice I ever encountered was offered by Teresa Amabile during a commencement address at Stanford. In effect, do what you love (and are passionate about) because you will then be doing what you do best. People do not necessarily have to change an employer or even a position to do what they do best and love most.

Some of the power questions work best in a career situation, others in a personal situation, and still others in both. Think of the 337 questions that Sobel and Panas pose and discuss as a base, a foundation, on which to build skills first exemplified by Socrates (c. 469 BC - 399 BC).

To those who are about to read this brilliant book, I presume to suggest they keep this question in mind: In which situations will asking the right questions be most important to me? For some people, this may well be the most valuable book on building healthy relationships that they will ever read...but only IF they continuously apply effectively what they have learned.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring January 30, 2012

By Douglas Bridges

Format:Hardcover

Power Questions has a simple but powerful thesis: That asking thought-provoking questions is a far better way to connect with people and build client relationships than trying to show how smart you are. We all know this but we often can't help ourselves. We end up talking too much and learning very little about the other person. I've enjoyed Sobel's other excellent books, such as Clients for Life and All for One, which focus on developing long-term client relationships. Power Questions extends this theme in a very readable, entertaining, and even inspiring book. I have tried using some of the questions, and they really do work. They can help you create very deep and interesting conversations.
Power Questions will help you equally with clients, colleagues, friends, and family. Rather than just a list of interesting questions, the book is built around a series of actual conversations that were transformed by a question. Sobel and his coauthor Panas are great storytellers, and I found myself drawn to read the next chapter as soon as I finished the one I was on. The questions they highlight are a mixture of ones you would use in a professional situation and others that might be more appropriate with family and friends. Here are some that I liked: Chapter 7--"How did you get started?" Here they recount a conversation with Rich DeVos, the founder of Amway. Chapter 8--"Do you mind if we start over?" The idea here is that when you get off on the wrong foot with someone, you can reset the conversation rather than keep digging a hole. Chapter 11--"Is this the best you can do?" This describes how Steve Jobs used this question to drive Apple engineers to the brink of insanity--and great results. Chapter 18--"What parts of your job do you wish you could spend more time on, and what things do you wish you could do less of?" This is a great question for getting a client (or your boss) to open up about their role and job. Others are more personal--e.g., "What was your happiest day?" or "Is there something else you'd like to accomplish?" Each of the chapters is short--just 3-4 pages, and they end with a brief guide to using the question. Power Questions concludes with a section that contains lists of about 300 more questions, divided by topics such as meeting a prospect, motivating employees, coaching, and so on.

This is an invaluable, enjoyable read.