Preparation in similar. You want to learn about him before you talk to him. Is there something about his profession that you can comment on to get the conversation flowing? Maybe you work in the same industry. Does she work in an interesting industry? Is there some industry jargon that you better use to be credible? What is his communication style? For example, is he dominant, amiable, introverted or extroverted? What will you say to put her at ease to share with you early in the conversation? Do you have something in common that you can build rapport with?

Planning

Whether I’m going to conduct an interview by asking questions or include elicitation techniques and be more conversational, I plan by listing all the questions I want answered. Next I rephrase them in a way that makes it easier for the person to become engaged based on my research of his personality, preferred communication style and profession. This is a great exercise since mentally I start thinking about all the different ways he might respond, and in turn what other questions he might answer, that are not on my list. I create something like a decision tree for interviewing…and you thought decision trees were just used in statistics. You can never be too prepared to interview her, since conversations often don’t go as you plan them.

Choose Your Words Wisely

Whether you have an appointment or make a cold call, you are interrupting the her day, so you need to use your words wisely so as not to waste her time. With some individuals, a little small talk is all it takes to jump start the conversation. With others, you need to state your purpose and get right to the point. Others will ask you questions to test your knowledge before they’ll share.

Defining Elicitation

Elicitation is a conversational interview, a planned conversation. People remember the beginning and the end of a conversation more than what is spoken in the middle. If you are asking a series of questions he might wonder why you are asking those questions, and how he might answer. How are you going to use the information he shares? Hmm, he might wonder how much he should share. What’s in it for him to share this information? Will what he share remain confidential?

Conducting Elicitation

You start and end your elicitation conversation with some inconsequential questions about the weather, last night’s football score or ask what brings them to the trade show. Other than this small talk, you don’t ask questions. This takes practice. For me it comes naturally, since it’s human nature. Yet, I feel I can always improve. When elicitation guru, John Nolan taught elicitation techniques at a SCIP workshop in 1995, I realized that I had been using them, but didn’t know it.

Elicitation builds off human tendencies that most people have: a desire for recognition, showing off, curiosity, gossiping, complaining, correcting you. Most people can’t keep a secret. There are numerous techniques, and I will illustrate a couple.

Elicitation Techniques

One of my favorites is flattery. Some people have a strong ego while others get so little recognition that stroking their ego really works.  Simple flattery often coaxes a person to share something during a conversation that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Everybody, whether prominent, or very low on the totem pole, reacts to flattery as long as it’s genuine. A common way to use flattery is, “I’ve heard you’re the best…an expert…” If flattery is not genuine, most people can see right through this, and you’ve lost all your credibility.

Another favorite is coming across as naïve. People just can’t resist enlightening you. But naïve doesn’t mean stupid. It just means that you don’t understand something or want to learn more. For example when I spoke to a trades person, I wanted to learn why he liked this particular competitor’s instrument. I simply said, “I am not as familiar with this company as I only know the market leader’s instrument which you replaced with this competitor’s model.” That’s all it took, and he told me what he liked about the competitor’s model, and why he didn’t replace it with the market leader’s.