#011 Great Answers to Tough Questions, with Michael Dodd

KAMCast - Key Account Management Strategies for Business Leaders

IN THIS EPISODE:

What is the toughest question you have faced from your most important customers?What is the toughest question you have faced from you team?

How did you handle those questions?

Did you answer with confidence and finesse? Or did you crumble under the pressure and end up blurting out more that you would care to share?

As a business leader, you will have undoubtedly faced some really tough questions over the years. Your ability to answer them will have played a really important role in the growth and success of your business.

So, what happens when you are not around? How do the account managers in your business cope under the mounting pressure of a difficult and challenging question?

Are the team naturally skilled in remaining cool, calm and collected under pressure or is this an area that needs development?

In this episode, I talk to Michael Dodd, international speaker, consultant and author of “Great Answers To Tough Questions At Work”.

Michael works with organisations to help them deal more effectively – or EVEN more effectively – with those nightmare questions that people in business can get any time from clients, prospects, members of our own team, or even the media … particularly given the challenges we face in a climate affected by the disruption of the pandemic.

Michael brings his experience as a political journalist from Australia - and as a foreign correspondent – where he was trained to ASK the toughest possible questions.

But he now helps clients to ANSWER them.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THIS EPISODE:

In our conversation, I put these main questions over to Michael:

• Is this a skill that can be learned, or are we looking for natural ability to deliver confident answers under pressure?
• What can we learn from people we see in the news? Can we model what good looks like from what we see on the news?
• How can we handle some of the most common questions that send us into a spin when we are put on the spot by clients and new prospects?

I would say that this episode does cause you to reflect inwardly on your own business and team and ask: “How would you rate your team in their ability to handle tough questions from your clients?”

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Option 1: You feel confident in your team. Your action now then is: how would you model that so that new team members can also learn the art of giving great answers in your business?

Option 2: This question causes your stomach to turn. Your next step then is to look at what you can do over the next few weeks to bolster this skillset and protect yourself from uncomfortable challenges.

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Michael’s ‘first step’ advice is to start to evaluate your skillset on this by thinking about what the hardest question is that you and your team could be asked? And what’s the best thing (right now) that you can respond with, on that topic?

If you are at risk of facing those - what Michael calls - ‘blow torch on the belly’ questions, it’s clear that we need to build a culture of planning, preparing and practising so that we are consistently and confidently READY with great answers. (I reckon these need to go into your KAM Plan structure somewhere!)

With communication being a huge factor to the success or weakness of the relationships with your key accounts, this really is an area that needs focus on, in the same way that we would focus on how we communicate new features of our products or service. Don’t you think?

Listen to the episode and let me know your experiences in tackling those tough questions. What’s your survival technique?

KILLER QUESTION SEGMENT

In each episode we ask you, our listener, a killer question that is designed to get you reflecting on your business, your KAM Culture and where changes in thinking and behaviour could lead to increased customer success.

In this episode we asked Michael to give us his killer question which was:

“What is the worse question for you?”

i.e. the one that you are secretly hoping (before you walk into THAT meeting)…that the customer won’t ask you?

Once you have the question then reflect on what the best thing is that you CAN say on that topic?

It’s worth saying too that Michael says as a precursor to the above – be sure to position your questions better too – ask them in a cleaner way without tainting your opinion into the question.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT MY GUEST: MICHAEL DODD

Michael is a Communication Specialist focussing on training clients to sharpen their skills in how to deal with tough questions from prospects, customers, staff, shareholders and the media.

With a background in broadcast journalism, Michael has learnt at the coal-face how to react, respond and communicate at warp speed. In the past he has worked as the Berlin and London Correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), has filed reports from across Europe and the US, and covered events in Eastern Europe before, during and after the 1989 revolutions for the ABC, Radio New Zealand and the BBC World Service. AS if that wasn’t enough - he has worked as a political correspondent in the Australian capital, Canberra, for national and international current affairs programs, and is a visiting lecturer on broadcast journalism for MA students.

Today, Michael draws on his rich media background & experience on camera, to teach entrepreneurs, professionals and business leaders how to tackle tough questions with confidence and finesse.

You can find out more about him on his website, connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter. You can find out more about his Media Master Classes, and his book ‘Great Answers to Tough Questions at Work’.