This issue of Frictionless is a seven-minute read designed to help sales executives, marketers, and content creators Unleash the Power of Questions. Identify and resolve customer pain points so you can develop effective sales strategies and write stronger case studies, RFP responses, op-eds, speeches, and website content. And if you're too busy to do it yourself, I can help. Original thoughts, plus I subscribe to 80+ newsletters and Google Alerts, so you don’t have to. Please consider bookmarking the issue so you can come back to the eight links if you're too busy to read them in one sitting).

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STARTING LINE

I once did a profile interview with NCNB Chairman and CEO Hugh McColl, who was usually portrayed as a combative ex-Marine with a dummy grenade on his desk who had turned his sleepy Charlotte bank (now Bank of America) into a juggernaut.

He left the office at one point during the interview so I had a chance to look around his office. No grenade in sight, but his desk faced a huge pastel painting behind the couch. After he returned, I asked about the painting. He told me it was the Serengeti Plains and he often just got "lost" staring at it when faced with a difficult decision. I chose to lead the story with that, given his reputation.

I got a thank-you call from his PR guy after the story ran, a nice note from Mr. McColl, and positive comments from readers. But the real "reward" came less than a year later after moving to Dallas when I received a late-night call asking if I could meet with him the next morning. We were on deadline for that week's paper, but it turned out McColl and his team were in town to acquire First RepublicBank, the largest and most troubled bank in Texas. I was told I got the heads-up (we held the paper for a day) because of the way I handled the profile.

Lesson learned (even if you're not a reporter): Look at the walls, whether you're in person or on Zoom, and look for connection points that will help you find an interesting new connection (schools, books read, accomplishments). In addition, always look at the other person's LinkedIn profile and make sure yours shows personality and detail that might give you an opportunity to break the ice or make a connection.

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On a side note, Sarah Laskow, senior editor at The Atlantic, emailed subscribers about the publication's climate-change reporting. What grabbed me was this sentence: "In the next year, we will be asking, What comes next?" My view is that's a question each of us should be asking AT LEAST once a day.

JESSE COLE OF THE SAVANNAH BANANAS ANSWERS SEVEN QUESTIONS

Subscribers are familiar with the combination of business and personal questions that I've been asking influencers like Chris Brogan, Gini Dietrich, Meg Johnson, Kyle Morck, and Mia Quagliarello. I sent a note to Jesse Cole, the founder and owner of the Savannah Bananas, a minor league baseball team that has become a media darling thanks to the very different way he and his team approach the game. For those of you who worked for MBNA (or were customers) back in the day, this will really put a smile on your face.

"Executive Rock Star" Renee Jacobs sent me this 3:14 video with Jesse's answers, which are great. But the fact that he responded should serve as a reminder to everyone trying to ask better questions that “much is lost for the want of asking,” as the English proverb says (and my negotiations mentor Ron Shapiro reinforced over and over again).

GREAT ADVICE

YOUR NEXT BUSINESS BOOK

Out today (unless you have a Kindle and bought it last week like I did), Robert Rose has published Content Marketing Strategy: Harness the Power of Your Brand's Voice. The emphasis of this terrific book from one of the great practitioners of content marketing is on the third word in the title, Strategy. While a bit repetitive at times, I took more notes and highlighted more sections than I normally do. Here are a few gems:

• Content is every business’s core operating system. It is the connective tissue that ties all the bits together.·
• Most businesses think about how they can change content to fit marketing’s purpose instead of how they might change marketing to fit content’s purpose.
• Make sure what you’re offering—whether it’s software like Windows, a product like a phone, a consulting service, or even something less tangible like content and customer experiences—is built to satisfy customer needs and desires instead of reflecting your internal organizational structure, your silos, your turf battles, your budget constraints. It just makes sense.
• The content marketing team’s job is not to be good at content. It is to help the business be good at content. Responsibilities are meaningless unless they are coordinated in a way that makes them all into a repeatable and scalable process.
• You’re not valuing the content the audience consumes; you’re valuing the audiences that consume the content. Ask yourself, by developing a better, deeper relationship with them will they: Do more on our behalf? Share more? Spread the word about us? Behave in a way we like with greater frequency? Tell us things that provide insight and help us grow faster and more efficiently. Act as a multiplier to our other efforts?
• As you develop buyer personas, what if you started with the customer’s need at the center of the story? What if, rather than starting with an answer (the product), and then attempting to figure out what attributes or fulfillment might lead the audience there—you started with the question, “What do you (potential buyer) need/want?”
• Meet with audiences to understand their needs and wants generally and -- most importantly -- listen for those social and contextual enhancements to their needs. One pattern to listen for: When I am ____ I need ____ so I can ____.

There's much more. My notes total more than 10,000 words. I've got it on Kindle (and the price was higher than most business books. But in retrospect, it's a bargain and I'm buying the paperback because it deserves a spot on my office bookshelf.

GREAT QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF

TWEETS THAT ACTUALLY RULE

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

1. Philosopher Tom V. Morris ponders the types of questions that business leaders like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs ask that many others don't. As my friend Tom puts it, the success of both is due to the "power of asking questions well and relentlessly."

2. How Leaders Can Get the Most Out of Asking Questions. MIT Sloan's Hal Gregersen talks about the power of putting yourself in a situation that provokes questions you normally wouldn't ask.

3. The 30 Questions Every Leader Must Ask to Stress-Proof Their Workplace Culture. Thanks to subscriber Kathy Simmons for forwarding this article by Gustavo Razzetti from Fearless Culture, which will help you "challenge, reflect on, and stress-proof the key building blocks of your company culture, regardless of whether you are operating in remote, hybrid, or in-person environments and whether you're a solopreneur or employ thousands of people.

4. Nine Steps to Uncover Decision Makers and Influencers in B2B Sales. Ren Saguil answers the question, How do we identify who in the organization is the right person to connect with? A great detailed primer on the subject from someone with 25+ years in tech sales.

5. The Basic Pricing Terms. Brian O'Connor offers advice to readers with a contract-based product/service who aren't sure what pricing levers they can pull to keep customers engaged.

6. How Old Is Too Old? This is a non-partisan article by Robert Reich that will be of particular interest to my many subscribers over age 55 who will smile at Reich recalling a New Yorker cartoon in which an older reader of the obituaries sees headlines that read only “Older Than Me” or “Younger Than Me.”

BONUS STORY: Tim Ferriss shared this longish short story by Isaac Asimov, the most prolific science fiction author of all time. Over 50 years, he averaged a new magazine article, short story, or book every two weeks, and most of that on a manual typewriter. As the story's lead says, "Asimov thought that The Last Question, first copyrighted in 1956, was his best short story ever. Even if you do not have the background in science to be familiar with all of the concepts presented here, the ending packs more impact than any other book that I've ever read. Don't read the end of the story first!​
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HOW CAN I HELP?

I sat down with members of a new banking client's sales, marketing, and service teams last week and asked them to list the most challenging questions they get. We focused on open-ended questions (not the ones that can be answered with yes or no and don't require detailed explanations). I watched two marketers in the room who seemed surprised by many of the questions. During a break, I asked about that and learned two things: They mostly focus on product features, and this was the first time in more than six months that they had met with the sales team (and the first time EVER that they met with the phone reps). I've spent the past few days on the company's website and am finding that very few of the questions we surfaced are answered there. I told the CMO that means prospective customers may be moving on to a competitor without ever reaching out, and there's probably an opportunity to beef up the online FAQ to reduce call volume. If you have challenges like this -- or aren't sure if you do -- consider reaching out to me here.

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