The question ‘Why?’ has been a bane to the existence of many a parent since people first started having children. If you’ve ever been around a four-year-old for a full day, you know the routine. Yet, maybe that four-year-old might be on to something with asking such a simple, yet, incredibly powerful word of being able to harness the power of ‘Why?’.

Why can’t I have this toy? Because we’re out of money until payday. Why? Because Daddy only gets paid once every two weeks? Why? Because that’s how his boss does it. Why? Because it’s easier. Why? Be quiet and eat your oatmeal.

While the tendency to question everything that children have can be quite annoying, there is a lot of value in it when it comes to business success. In fact, of all the business tips that you will receive in a lifetime, the encouragement to ask ‘Why?’ often is one of the most valuable for achieving and maintaining your success. Here’s why (sorry).

‘Why?’ Helps You Improve Negotiation Skills

One of our most favorite entrepreneur tips — you guessed it, ‘Why?’ — has also helped us improve negotiation skills, both as business owners and employees.

While you don’t have to use the kid approach of literally asking ‘Why?’ aloud to everything that the other negotiating party says, you can run through a litany of them in your head to better understand an opponent’s bargaining position and to better understand your own limitations.

Powerful Questions Like ‘Why?’ Get You to the Heart of What Works (and What Doesn’t). 

Let’s say that you have poured thousands of dollars into developing your website’s content. You expect to see some return on that investment, and you’ve hired a host of writers to keep articles pumping along. But then you take your sudden traffic boom out to impress those advertisers, and none of them are biting.

Why?

Perhaps it is a problem with the content. Why would you have a problem with the content? Traffic high, after all. Further investigation shows that you have extremely high bounce rates. However, in that sea of failure, there are a few articles that really pop. People aren’t just visiting those pages in droves; they are staying five minutes.

Why?

You open up the page and start to investigate. You see that those articles are filled with engaging content, multimedia add-ons that integrate well with the text, and each one has a call-to-action at the end. You compare these articles to some of your many poorly performing pieces and find that in most cases none of these elements are in place, or if they are, they’re poorly used and give visitors little reason to engage.

Why?

Maybe you’ve hired the wrong personal for the job; but maybe it goes deeper than that. Perhaps you have a poor orientation system in place and have not clearly communicated what you’re looking for from a quality article. Perhaps you didn’t KNOW what you were looking for until you saw the few positive results.

What are you going to do with this information moving forward — fire everyone or reinvest time and effort in training your crew to rise to those higher standards?

Why? 

It’s a one-word question, but in this case it has delivered some powerful enlightenment that you can use to better your website and online business.

What are some ways that you can harness the power of Why? in your business, and what can we do to help? Sound off in the comments section below.