You found the problem. You showed them the fix. They said no.
So you blame the price. But the price wasn’t the issue. You asked questions to get answers, and that’s all you got. You never gave them a reason to trust you.
And you don’t get a do-over. One visit. One house. A limited number of questions.
Chris Elmore’s rule: if all a question does is get you an answer, it’s the wrong question.
In this episode of Windshield Time, Chris shows you what he means with a game. He picks a number between 1 and 20. You get three yes-or-no questions to find it. That game is easy to win. Then he takes away yes-or-no, and it falls apart, because now he doesn’t want to give up the number.
Nothing about the number changed. A person got involved.
Chris calls the mistake target fixation. When all you want is the problem or the yes, you stop seeing everything around the target. Including the person standing in the room.
Ask better questions, and you change the odds they say yes to what you recommend.
-Service Excellence
Inside This Episode:
- Why a question that only gets an answer is the wrong question, and what a good one does instead: build trust, build value, and teach you about the person
- Target fixation: how chasing the problem or the yes makes you stop seeing the customer in the room
- The difference between troubleshooting a system and talking to a person… a meter answers yes or no, a homeowner doesn’t
- Why open-ended questions feel harder and make people guard their answers, and why they’re worth it anyway
- The introduction at the door, question by question, and what each one is actually building
- Why asking about allergies at the thermostat backfires, and what to bring the customer instead
- How to split “too expensive” into the money or the thing with one question, and what to listen for in how they qualify the answer
Episode Chapters & Summary
The Number Game: Three Questions, One Guess
Chris runs an exercise with Alex. A number between 1 and 20, three yes or no questions, one guess. Alex gets it. Then Chris deconstructs why it worked, and what pure logic can and can’t do for you.
Key takeaways:
- Alex narrows 20 possibilities to 10, then 5, then 2, and guesses correctly.
- Each question is built to reduce the field as much as possible, safely.
- With pure logic, a 50-50 shot is the best outcome you can engineer.
- Chris says logic wins this game 38.1% of the time.
- A risky question pays off big when the answer goes your way and does little when it doesn’t.
Change One Rule and the Game Gets Hard
Chris re-runs the exercise with open-ended questions only, and Alex is immediately stuck. The shift reveals what actually changes when logic comes off the table: the person becomes part of the problem.
Key takeaways:
- Under yes or no rules, Chris felt no reason to protect his number. Under open-ended rules, he wanted to guard it.
- An open-ended question reveals more about the person than about the answer.
- Everyone Chris has run this exercise with says the second version is harder.
- Even one word can break it. “Between 10 and 20” means different things to different people if you aren’t in the same frame of reference.
Target Fixation in the Customer’s Home
The pivot to the field. Chris uses a shooting term to name the failure: when your only goal is the problem or the yes, you stop seeing everything else. He then separates the two kinds of questions a tech asks in a day.
Key takeaways:
- Target fixation means you notice nothing but the target, including nothing behind or around it.
- Troubleshooting is asking logical questions of a system… a meter, a gauge, a sound, a smell.
- An inanimate object can only answer yes or no. Narrowing it down is the right approach there.
- The moment a person is involved, you have emotions, opinions, reason or unreason to account for.
Look Around Before You Ask
Chris makes the case that the answers are often already in the room. He uses the jersey number example to show how one detail unlocks a category of knowledge, then names a common mistake techs are trained into.
Key takeaways:
- What you observe in a home tells you how the customer thinks: photos, kids, what’s on the walls.
- Asking about allergies and asthma at the thermostat five minutes in has no credibility behind it.
- You’re not a doctor. No letters after your name, no lab coat, no stethoscope.
- Find physical evidence first, bring it to the customer, then ask the question.
- The jersey story is made up. Chris says so twice.
The Introduction, Question by Question
The most practical segment. Chris role-plays the walk-up with Alex, then goes back through each question and names what it was building. He also shows what you learn when the customer answers with more than you asked for.
Key takeaways:
- Give your name first, then confirm theirs. Once anonymity is gone, people trust you more.
- Asking permission to use a first name puts you on a first-name basis by their consent.
- Confirming why you’re there gets the last 1% and shows you came prepared.
- Asking about where the truck is parked shows respect for the property.
- Asking before you come in and before you put on floor savers shows respect for the person and the home.
- The count of yeses doesn’t matter. Feeling respected is what makes trust and value possible.
- Customers volunteer things you never asked for: a nickname, how long it’s been broken, who else is home.
The Moral: Two Jobs for Every Question
Chris closes by connecting it back to LEAP and the price objection, then states the rule the whole episode is built on. He also makes the case that this is about odds, not manipulation.
Key takeaways:
- On “too expensive,” listen to understand, not to respond.
- One question splits it: is it the total price, or something in the solution you don’t need or don’t like?
- That question also reveals whether the stated objection was the real one.
- Listen for how they qualify the answer. “A lot of other projects going on” means prioritization, not affordability.
- Customers allocate time, money, and emotion, and they have to prioritize all three.
- If all a question does is get you an answer, it’s the wrong question. Reword it.
- Better questions increase the odds the customer goes with what you recommend.
