Why spend the money?

I like this phrase. I used it today when I was talking with someone about upgrading a piece of their production kit.

I used to say, ‘why waste the money?’ in this type of conversation, but that is received more like a judgemental statement rather than a genuine question.

You see, I was actually curious to find out why the person would spend the money. I had no idea if it was a waste of money or not. That is for them to decide. My conversation was more curious about the reason for spending the money and if it was well thought out and qualitative reason.

It was funny because when I asked the question, the person repeated it back to me in a way to confirm if they had actually heard the question correctly. People are not used to being asked such a straightforward question like a Why?

We go through life asking questions more to confirm our biases or to enforce a decision we have already made. More often or not the answer we are given back is in support of the loaded question we have asked because we are friendly people and we tend to be nice to each other. Changing the expected answer or asking a question towards the question can quickly reframe the whole conversation.

When I reaffirmed the question, the person sat back in their seat and blew out their cheeks. That body language in itself helped me realise that they had not thoroughly thought out their purchase. They WANTED to buy the item, but they had not really thought it through deeply.

‘That’s a good question’, he said.

‘Cool’, I said, ‘So what would be a good answer?’

As we explored the possible outlay more, he did realise that there was absolutely no need for the upgrade. In fact, if they delayed the purchase for another six months, there would be a chance of a price drop or even a better upgrade as technology is forever reinventing itself.

The upshot was that they did not make the purchase. They parked up the £200 and looked at getting more from the kit that they already had.