What questions to ask in the interview

By Michael Lund    

The right questions can reveal what a potential employer really wants.

Philip Hesketh has a killer question that could help you get the job during that all important interview.

It’s an obvious question but one he says few candidates ever ask.

It took Hesketh several years to work out what the question was.

When the penny finally dropped, it changed the way he did businesses forever.

It’s actually one of 50 killer questions he developed while working in advertising as he tried to figure out why people buy what they do.

He didn’t start out in advertising though. Hesketh studied psychology at university and his first job was working in a mental hospital.

“I just felt as though it wasn’t for me,” he says. “I didn’t really have the empathy that you need. I always felt like saying, `pull yourself together’.”

But it’s this straight-talking, no-nonsense approach that helped him succeed in advertising sales and head a multimillion-dollar business.

Frustrated at losing some key contracts, he started to question his approach and the needs of potential clients. He was astounded by what he discovered.

“People don’t always tell you what they want,” he says. “People don’t always tell you the truth.”

He needed a new approach that would break through this barrier so, drawing on his psychology training, he began to develop his killer questions.

He studied other people in sales positions to see where they were going right and, more importantly, where they were going wrong.

“Most people, most of the time, don’t really know what they’re doing,” Hesketh says.

He gives the example of someone looking to buy a car. They go to a showroom, look at some cars, maybe even sit in the driver’s seat of a few. They may have some knowledge of the cars or the manufacturer.

But Hesketh says salespeople who concentrate on the car’s gadgets and gizmos take the wrong approach.

“If you’re selling a car, don’t turn all the features into benefits and talk about brake horsepower and speed,” he says.

“Just say to the customer, `What is the most important thing to you’.”

It’s the obvious question, says Hesketh, but the question many people in sales never ask. Once asked, though, it needs to be quickly followed up by a second killer question.

“They might say, `The size of the boot’, so you then say, `Why is that?’ and they tell you what they’re actually interested in,” he says.

It’s an approach he says can be extended to any area of business.

“I’ve got 50 killer questions but the first two – `what is the most important thing to you’ always followed by `why is that’ – absolutely guarantee you begin to tap into why people really want to buy,” he says.

“When you ask questions, you find out what the person is really interested in and the other person thinks that you care.”

It’s a message Hesketh has been delivering to business and industry groups this week in Brisbane.

Based in Yorkshire, in the north of England, he spends two months every British winter in Australia on the public speaking circuit.

He’s in demand, too, with many organisations looking for him to repeat his teachings.

“I’ve got one client who wants me to do a day five with their sales guys and I said, `I haven’t got a day five, you’ve had all my stuff’,” Hesketh says.

“He says `Just come back and tell them the same thing again because when you talk to my guys I see the sales figures increase for a period of time but then after about six or seven weeks they forget, so come back and tell them again’.”

So if his techniques work and increase sales, why do people forget?

“Because people are lazy and they slip back into old habits,” he says.

That’s where Hesketh turns to the Titanic, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and The Beatles to make his point on why some originally successful ideas eventually fail.

“It’s always the same story where it’s hard work at the beginning, then there are three things that happen to all businesses and all relationships,” Hesketh says.

“You become complacent, so hubris settles in.

“You get disunity because of complacency and people turn inwards and fight each other.

“And then you get greed.

“And those three things are what always ruin everything.”

Those businesses that succeed are the ones that pay attention to the needs of their staff and clients by asking what is important to them – and why, he says.

“We have these three basic fundamental psychological needs: to be loved; to be important; and to be part of something,” he says.

“In successful businesses, growing businesses, people feel loved, they feel important and they feel part of something that’s successful.

“Businesses that aren’t successful are ones where people don’t feel loved, they don’t feel important and they don’t feel as though anybody cares about them – they’re not part of something.”

So how does his killer question work at the job interview?

Hesketh says candidates should ask a potential employer what it sees as the most important thing about the business and the most important thing about the job on offer.

And then ask why.

“There’s another great interview question – I’ve got 50 killer questions, and this is an absolute belter,” Hesketh says.

“When you’re being interviewed, just say, `Before I go, on a scale of one to 10, where one is you wish you hadn’t interviewed me and 10 is you want to offer me the job, where are we? Not where am I, but where are we?’

“They might say `eight’.

“And you say, `OK, what do we have to do to get a 10′.”

Need to know

Some more of Philip Hesketh’s 50 killer questions:

What is the most frustrating thing to you about . . .?

* Why is that?

* Why do you ask?

* If you were me, what would you do?

* How do you feel about that?

* What makes you say that?

* Is that a fact, an assumption or an opinion?

* What can I do to help you today?

* Would it be useful/helpful if . . .?

* What would we do differently if . . .?