Semarize

Question Strategy & Curiosity Playbook

Analyses questioning behaviour to determine whether reps use open-ended, insight-driven questions that deepen understanding. Measures follow-up depth, listening behaviour, and interruption patterns to improve conversational quality.

Sales Coaching1 kit · 4 bricks

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Deploy this kit stack into your workspace. Customize bricks, scoring, and outputs to match your team.

Open in Semarize

Without this playbook

Most teams handle question strategy & curiosity through scattered call reviews, manager opinion, and isolated examples. Without a shared operational definition, the signals stay inconsistent and difficult to act on across volume.

With this playbook

A shared, repeatable lens for question strategy & curiosity - with structured outputs you can route into coaching, reporting, and workflow automation. Every conversation produces evidence, not just opinions.

Built for

Sales managers, enablement leads, and frontline coaches

When teams use it

  • Coaching sessions and 1:1 reviews
  • Rep skill development tracking
  • QBR preparation and team benchmarking

The operational stack

1 kit behind this playbook

Asking questions and actually listening to the answers are two different capabilities. This stack measures both - whether the rep is asking the kind of open-ended, layered questions that create insight, and whether they are listening well enough to build on what they hear. Reps who score well on questioning but poorly on listening are interrogating, not discovering. You need both signals to coach effectively.

Listening & Response Kit

4 bricks

Tracks listening behaviour and substantive follow-ups.

Included bricks

Customize this kit

Talk Ratio Score

Score

Measures how much each speaker talks rep versus customer

Open Vs Closed Question Ratio

Boolean

Scores ratio of open versus closed questions asked

Active Listening Signal Present

Boolean

Detects active listening cues acknowledgements and paraphrasing

Interruptions Present

Boolean

Detects interruptions that break effective listening

Knowledge base

Supporting materials

The kits in this playbook work best when backed by reference materials that ground the evaluation. Upload these into your workspace knowledge base to improve accuracy and relevance.

Learn more about Knowledge Bases

Questioning framework documentation (e.g. SPIN, Sandler, Challenger)

Examples of high-quality open-ended questions by deal stage

Internal coaching rubrics for conversational quality

Recorded call libraries with annotated questioning sequences

Talk ratio and listening behaviour benchmarks

Structured output

What you get back

Every conversation processed through this stack produces a structured JSON object. Each brick contributes a typed field - booleans, scores, categories, or string lists - that you can route, aggregate, and report on.

Example output shape

{
  "talk_ratio_score": 7,
  "open_vs_closed_question_ratio": true,
  "active_listening_signal_present": true,
  "interruptions_present": true
}

In practice

How teams use these outputs

The structured outputs from this stack integrate into your existing workflows. Use them wherever you need repeatable, evidence-based signal from conversations.

Coaching sessions and 1:1 reviews

Rep skill development tracking

QBR preparation and team benchmarking

Enablement program measurement

Get started

Deploy this playbook in your workspace

Customizing creates a workspace-owned draft with this playbook's full kit stack. Adjust bricks, scoring, and outputs to fit your team, then publish when ready.