Six questions, and what to do when they cannot answer

The meeting where you ask nothing

The client says what they want. You say yes. Everyone leaves happy and you build the wrong thing. This happens because asking questions feels like admitting you do not already know, and because the client is busy and you do not want to be difficult.

It is worth being slightly difficult for about twelve minutes. Here are six questions, in an order that works, with what each is actually for.

The six

1. “Who do you want to see this, and can you describe the last person like that who actually bought?”

The second half is the working part. The first half gets you a demographic; the second gets you a human being with a name and a sentence they said. If they cannot describe one, that itself is the finding: the business does not know who buys, and your poster will not fix that.

2. “What do you think they believe about you right now?”

Asked flatly, this produces a defensive answer. Asked as “what is the thing people get wrong about you”, it produces the truth, often with feeling. The complaint you get here is usually the whole brief.

3. “What should happen after somebody sees it?”

Push for an action, not a state. “Feel confident about us” is unfalsifiable. “Call the number”, “come to the shop on Saturday”, “stop worrying enough to read the price list” can all be checked.

4. “What has been tried before, and what happened?”

The most under-asked question in the trade. There is almost always a previous attempt. Whether it worked matters less than why they think it did not, because that sentence contains the standard you are being judged against.

5. “Is there anything you already know you will not approve?”

This saves your favourite concept. Every client has a forbidden list: a colour the competitor uses, a word the founder hates, a style that reminds them of a failed campaign. They will not volunteer it, and they will absolutely reject work over it.

6. “Who else has to say yes?”

Asked last because by then they are comfortable. The answer changes your timeline, the number of rounds, and how you present. A concept that survives one enthusiastic owner dies in a committee unless you build the case for it into the presentation.

When they cannot answer

Often they do not know, and pressing harder produces invention rather than information. Three moves, in order of cost:

• Offer two wrong answers. “Is it more that people think you are expensive, or that they have never heard of you?” People who cannot generate an answer can almost always choose between two, and the correction (“neither, it’s that they think we only do weddings”) is better than either option you offered.
• Ask for artefacts instead of opinions. The last three enquiry emails. A photo of the shop. The price list. Facts are easier to hand over than judgements, and you can read the judgement out of them yourself.
• Propose and let them react. Write the brief as you understand it, in six lines, and send it. People who cannot author a brief are excellent at correcting one. This is the single most reliable technique in the list.

Write it down in front of them

Type or write the answers during the conversation, and read the summary back before you leave. It feels awkward and it is the difference between a shared understanding and two private ones. The phrase to use is: “so the job is to get salon owners who think delivery takes a week to try one order — and the piece has to work on a phone with no sound. Have I got that right?”

Then send it in writing the same day. Not as a contract, as a record. When the fourth revision round asks for something that contradicts answer 3, you have a calm, non-accusatory thing to point at.

The honest limit

This process finds what the client knows and can say. It does not find what is true. A client can sincerely tell you their customers value craftsmanship when the customers are in fact buying on price and nothing else, and the discovery meeting will not catch that: every answer came from the same source, so there is nothing to disagree with.

The only correction is a second source, and it need not be expensive: ten minutes of competitor reviews, one conversation with the person who answers the phone, or three sentences from an actual customer. When the second source contradicts the client, you do not win the argument by asserting it. You show them the three sentences. Evidence they can read themselves changes minds; your professional opinion, offered against their lived experience of their own business, rarely does.