■ Retake the Floor ■

Let’s return to that moment after you opened the floor to the person in the middle of the room. You listened to the long, rambling question and, either on your own or through the questioner’s restatement, have a full grasp the Roman Column in the question. As a results-driven person, you are eager to provide an answer when you Retake the Floor.

But suppose that first question comes at you like this:

Wait a minute! You tell me that your product is going to save us money, and then you give me sticker shock with a price that’s twice as much as your competition asks! That’s outrageous! Where do you get off charging so damned much?

Then suppose you were to give this answer:

When you consider the total cost of ownership of our solution, you’ll see that it will save you money in the long run.

At this critical juncture, the moment you step into the line of fire, in your very first answer to the very first question, you would be saying that your prospective buyer is wrong. After all, the clear inference in the question is that you are charging too much, and the clear inference in your answer is that you are not charging too much—that, in fact, your price is a bargain.

That response would peeve your questioner, as well as the rest of the audience, because they would perceive you as being contentious. In response, your audience—your prospective customers—would be unlikely to buy your product because your negative behavior would produce a negative perception. Just as the negative behavior of CEO Lourenco Goncalves—lashing out at the Goldman Sachs analyst—caused shares of Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. to fall more than 6%.²

Another approach, widely offered as conventional wisdom for Q&A sessions, is to repeat the question. However, if, after being asked “Where do you get off charging so damned much?” you were to repeat the question this way:

Where do we get off charging so damned much?

You would then validate the inference that you are overcharging. Your prospective buyer would perceive you as having admitted guilt. Or, in the words of the late-night television comics, “Nailed ’em!”

What’s worse, when you answer a question by repeating negative words, you are very likely to begin defensively by saying something like “When you consider the total cost of ownership…”—which implies that your questioner does not understand how business operates.

In each of those responses, you would be carrying forward a negative balance and starting a long, difficult slog up a very steep mountain.

Therefore, when you are asked a hostile question, do not answer, and do not repeat; instead, follow General Sun Tzu’s strategy in the epigraph.

■ The General’s Strategy ■

Many modern businesses have on their bookshelves a requisite copy of Sun Tzu’s 2,500-year-old treatise on combat—with good reason. Here in the twenty-first century, the soldier-philosopher’s ideas have become a recognized strategy for combat in business, if not a primer for any conflict in life. His premise of winning without fighting is a perfect analogue for handling tough questions.

Fighting is synonymous with the contentious and defensive behavior that you saw exhibited by Mark McGwire, John Stumpf, Mike Lazaridis, and Lourenco Goncalves. Each of them demonstrated negative behavior that produced negative perceptions in their audiences, and none of them won his engagement.

Contentiousness is the most damaging because it represents loss of control. To achieve a positive perception with your audience, never react to tough questions with anger; instead, always respond with firm but calm resolve—by deploying the Buffer.

■ The Buffer ■

Just as heavy machinery uses springs or other devices to cushion the impact of opposing parts or forces, you can use a rhetorical device to cushion the impact of a verbal challenge. In Q&A, that device is the Buffer, the one or two Key Words that identify the essence of the question, the heart of the matter—the very words you learned to extract from the long rambling question during the Active Listening lesson of the previous chapter. The Buffer is essentially a statement of the Roman Column, the ultimate distillation technique. By using only the one or two Key Words, you remove any negative words and neutralize the hostility. Here’s how to do that with the hostile question from the opening salvo of this chapter:

Wait a minute! You tell me that your product is going to save us money, and then you give me sticker shock with a price that’s twice as much as your competition asks! That’s outrageous! Where do you get off charging so damned much?

The Key Word is “price.” Just price, that’s all. Not “twice as much,” “sticker shock,” or “so damned much.” The Buffer is:

Our pricing rationale is…

Notice that the Buffer does not validate the questioner’s assertion that the price is too high, nor does it invalidate the questioner’s assertion by saying that the price is justified by the total cost of ownership.

The Buffer accomplishes General Sun Tzu’s strategy—based on a foundational principle of martial arts: rather than try to counter force with force, deflect force.

By neutralizing the challenge, you can move into your answer without agreeing or defending. You will only have to address the price itself, not whether it is too high or too low. You won’t be learning the answering techniques until Chapter Twelve, but first let’s take a deeper look at Buffering in Figure 8.1.

The light area in the center of the horizontal bar is the safe zone, and the outer dark areas at either end are danger zones. Your objective is to position the Roman Column in the safe zone.

If you were to reverse the challenging question in your response—“When you consider the total cost of ownership…”—you would land in the danger zone on the right because you would be invalidating the questioner’s concern by implying that your solution is worth twice the price. Your audience would then perceive you as being contentious and resist doing business with you.

If you were to repeat the challenging question—“Where do we get off charging so much?”—you would land in the danger zone on the left because you would be validating that your charge is excessive. Your audience would then perceive you as admitting guilt.

By Buffering to only the price, you can explain your rationale in your answer without having to deal with whether the price is too high or worth twice as much.

Two other important benefits of the Buffer are that it distills the long ramble into a clearly identified concept for the rest of the audience, and for you, it tees up your answer.

You’ll note that the hostile question above happens to be the first of the Seven Universal Issues you saw in Chapter Four, repeated here for your convenience:

1. Price/Cost

2. Compete/Differentiate

3. Qualifications/Capabilities

4. Timing

5. Growth/Outlook

6. Contingencies

7. Problems

The first four represent the most frequently asked types of hostile questions; the latter three are challenging as well, but they are usually worded less aggressively than the first four.

Let’s look at how to Buffer the Seven Universal Issues, starting with the hostile types.

■ Buffers for the Seven Universal Issues ■

■ Industry- or Company-Specific Buffers ■

Although Kara Swisher is a veteran journalist, having reported for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and now for the New York Times, she asks lengthy questions. Her intent, as it is for any journalist, is to set a context for the question, but the length creates a challenge for interviewees. Here’s such a question Swisher asked Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snap, the social media company, in an interview at the Code technology conference:

My kids are on Snapchat a lot, especially my 16-year-old, he grew up with Snapchat. I hate to do anecdotal things, but I watch him use it a lot, and he was mad about the redesign, like furious, he was like, “Tell Evan I’m very upset about this.” And I’m like, “I think I won’t,” but he had a whole long list of issues and yet he uses it almost continuously. He’s always on it, he uses it for communication, he uses it, and he does it in such a facile way. So, talk a little bit about this redesign ‘cause it was very controversial, it had an impact on your business, so talk about—walk us through what you think happened and the mistakes you made and what you were trying to do to fix it.

Spiegel extracted “redesign” (a variation of Snap’s product roadmap or plan) from Swisher’s ramble and Buffered to it at the very beginning of his response:

Well, first please thank him for using the service despite the redesign.¹⁴

Poppy Harlow is also a veteran journalist, with stops at CBS, NY1 News, and Forbes.com Video Network before her current role at CNN. Harlow posed a question that was only slightly shorter than Swisher’s in an interview with Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins:

Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff told me just last week he has mandated—he has basically put quotas in place—you have to have X amount of women in executive leadership meetings—you have to have X amount of women speaking at these events. Is that what we need, is to make a conscious effort from the top, say, so they’re in the position to get those jobs?

Harlow’s reference to “quotas” was about equal opportunities for women (a variation of Cisco’s roadmap or plan for diversity), but Robbins’s Buffer was one synonymous word, “parity”:

We’ve done all the same work on the parity side.

Then, as he continued on into his answer, Robbins, repeated the Key Word.

We’ve actually invested in the analysis to make sure we understand not only for women but all—all different diverse groups that we have balance and parity in place and we’re doing the same things.¹⁵

During an interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bloomberg Television News anchor Betty Liu asked him this question about autonomous driving:

Let’s say it’s on autopilot, so it’s not autonomous—ah—but if it’s on autopilot and the driver says, “Hey, you know this was supposed to change lanes for me and instead it hit this barrier. I want, you know, I want Tesla to be responsible for this.”

In the first sentence of his response to Liu’s question (a variation of a contingency issue), Musk Buffered directly to “responsibility”:

I think we’re—we’re going to be quite clear with customers that the responsibility remains with the driver.¹⁶

Swisher, Harlow, and Liu—all experienced journalists—intending to establish context, often ask long questions. Spiegel, Robbins, and Musk—all prominent CEOs—must cut through the word salads to appear perceptive and prepared. This ability is particularly important when the issue is a challenge.

The Buffer is also useful in handling another set of questions, which are more challenging in their style and structure than in their substance, as you’ll see in the next chapter.