Have you ever been in a sales meeting or on a prospecting call when someone throws a question at you that feels sharp or ambiguous? I’ll bet you have.

When that happens, it’s natural to feel obliged to respond on the spot. But giving an immediate answer to prickly questions puts you at a disadvantage, and an awkward reply can take the conversation in the wrong direction.

The best way to respond to prickly questions is to throw them back to the other person as if they just threw a porcupine at you — hence the sobriquet porcupine questions.

Instead of giving an immediate answer, you turn it around and ask the questioner to confirm or clarify what they meant. This creates a more collaborative dialog, and has three other benefits as well:

• You’re able to engage the prospect further
• You can better understand the intent behind their question
• You gain more time to respond with the most appropriate answer.

Let’s look at three examples and see how that actually works.

#1

Suppose in the middle of a prospecting call or a sales meeting, the owner of a small manufacturing company, asks “Can you get us out of the work comp pool?”

Without knowing more details you can’t really give a good answer. It might turn out that their situation is so severe and their risk management so lacking, they’re not even a business you want to insure. On the other hand, there may be classification errors or other problems you can fix.

Either way, throwing the question back to them will help bring the clarification you need to give them a more informed response. “Is that your major insurance concern now? Tell me more about that situation.”

#2

A question I’m asked occasionally when I’m talking to prospects about PMA’s telemarketing lead generation services is “Do you work with other commercial agencies in this part of the state?”

The questioner might have two very different reasons for asking. Either he wants references, or he wants to make sure we’re not already working for a competitor. Instead of guessing his intention and trying to respond one way or the other, I’ve learned it’s best to throw it back in his court: “Are you asking about references or are you concerned about a conflict of interest?”

When he responds, I can either assure him that we don’t work for competing agencies, or promise to connect him with some appropriate PMA clients.

#3

“How long will it take to get our website high up in the search results?”

Anyone familiar with SEO and web development knows this is indeed a thorny question. If you’re building someone’s website, you wouldn’t want to dismiss the question out of hand, or get into a technically complicated explanation of all the considerations that determine page rank.

Instead, a porcupine answer would move things along nicely. “Optimizing website for best search results can be complex. What are your most important goals for the new website? Can you tell me about the services you want to promote the most and who you think are your main competitors?”

It’s natural to feel we need to respond when someone asks us something. It’s good to remember how helpful it is to throw things right back to the questioner instead of responding too quickly when we’re on the spot.

Got a good porcupine story of your own? We’d love to hear yours. Write something in the comments below.