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Five Greatest Ways of Getting
the Order (or at Least Your Own Way)

Introduction

Rudyard Kipling’s famous five friends ‘Who, what, when, where and why’ is prob-
ably the first documentation of the ‘open’ question. Most business people use open
questions to elicit information from customers, markets, colleagues and so on. Eve-
ryone is aware that if you ask the right open question you can get people to talk
about themselves, what they do and what they like.

But actual progress in business is made with the frequent asking of closed ques-
tions – questions that look for one word answers, often ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It is by closing
for agreement that you become aware of whether or not you are going to get your
own way, what salespeople call ‘getting the order’. One of the greatest business
ideas, therefore, has to be to hone your skills in asking closing questions and set
stretching but achievable objectives every time you communicate with colleagues,
customers and suppliers.

‘It’s so frustrating when you do not tell us what you want us to do or what you
want us to agree to’ said the Chairman of the Board to a middle manager at the end
of a presentation. The manager had requested an opportunity to make a half-hour
pitch to his senior colleagues. He had been talking about a new channel of distribu-
tion that he was in the process of setting up, and the reason he had asked for the
meeting was to help to remove an uncomfortable feeling that some other managers
did not think the new idea as brilliant as he did. He felt he needed ‘top cover’.

Such scenes are played out in business millions of times a day. It’s strange but
true that while very few managers nowadays would think of operating without some
agreed objectives and measures of performance, they frequently communicate, be it