Open vs Closed Questions
Use open questions to make buyers talk and closed ones to confirm; knowing when to switch drives discovery.
How it sounds
- You How does your team handle renewals today?
- Buyer We just handle it manually as it comes up, nobody really owns it.
- You So that's about forty renewals a month?
- Result You surface real problems and language to sell against, not just confirm a guess.
The full entry
An open question cannot be answered with one word and invites the buyer to explain (“How does your team handle renewals today?”). A closed question asks for a yes, no or single fact (“Do you handle renewals in-house?”). Discovery lives on open questions; closed ones are for confirming and pinning down.
To use them well, lead with open questions to get the buyer describing their world in their own words, then use closed questions to nail specifics and check understanding (“So that’s about forty renewals a month?”). A call that is all closed questions turns into an interrogation and you learn nothing you did not already suspect.
It works because open questions surface the problems, priorities and language you will sell against. The common mistake is asking a closed question when you wanted a story, then filling the silence yourself. This is fundamental questioning technique with no single originator, though Rackham’s SPIN work sharpened how salespeople apply it.