“That’s a great question”
If you’ve ever heard that said to you, you know how good that feels. Why is that?
We all take a well-earned pride in being able to ask a good or great question. Show interest, intelligence, caring… all the things most people like to be known for. A person who asks a question is an explorer. He or she is on a curious quest, chasing the answer, seeking knowledge, seeking the truth about something, making a request.
Asking great questions is a noble (and profitable) cause.
ask and you shall receive
Questions open doors. They are the means we use to find out what is happening to someone, and also to ourselves. When you’re with a potential client, working with a member of your organization, or conducting training for an entire networking group, the questions are your value and your craft. They are the only thing that turns a monologue into a dialogue, which, as Plato claimed, is where the truth is revealed.
Questions make it a conversation. And in the conversation, according to many, is where life itself appears.
Taking a genuine interest in people is perhaps the only true requirement for success in network marketing. The medium of conversation is the way we experience and express this interest and concern. The currency we exchange in the transaction is the language. Asking questions and listening to the answers is the investment we make. Understanding is the return and the reward.
big questions
Our first set of big questions comes from the late John Kalench’s classic network marketing manual, Be the best you can be in MLM. Although John offered them simply as “the top five questions on your prospect’s mind to answer in an opportunity meeting,” it’s easy to see that they exist from your first meeting through the “acceptance phase” of being in business- -a phase that for some can last for years.
To sponsor someone, it is mandatory to find the real answers to these questions.
- “Is this business easy, I mean, can I really do it?”
- “It’s fun?”
- “Will I really make any money doing this?”
- “Will you help me do it?”
- “Is now the right time to get involved?”
As you can see, a negative answer to any of the above would be a barrier to entering the business. For your presentation to be successful, each of these must be answered the satisfaction of your prospect. One way to make sure your prospect gets answers to these questions is to use the direct approach:
“Mary, in my experience, everyone considering this opportunity has five questions that need to be answered in order to make the right decision. I’d like to ask you these questions and find out what answers you’ve found. Is that okay with you?”
Questions that get to the heart of the matter
Getting to the essence of things is another of those mandatory tasks in questioning. Here is a series of excellent questions designed to do just that.
“What does that mean to you?”
“What does that give you?”
These two come from Carol McCall and Mike Smith, [former partners] of the World Institute for Life Planning. Mike and Carol’s work is about revealing people’s values, and these two questions help focus people’s responses and reveal the core or essence of what they are saying.
As an example: if you were involved in a sponsorship interview and were
asking about what was most important to his prospect in his life, “And what does that mean to you?” would be the perfect follow-up question.
If they said something as vague but important as “time” or “money,” “What does that mean to you?” followed by, “What will that get you?” It will get right to the heart of the matter. Your answers will get both of you talking about your values, and at that level, you’ll immediately see if your opportunity is right for them (and you’ll know if they and you are right for it, too).
Also, the “for you” and “for you” aspects of these questions allow the person to give an answer that relates directly to them, rather than a dictionary definition that they may or may not agree with or care about. .
Keep going
It is vitally important to keep the conversation going. The reason is that you don’t want to tell your prospect or “Distributor-in-Training” the answer. He wants them to discover it for themselves. And you have to keep the questions and answers for them to do it.
“Say more about that…” is the perfect extender. This “soliciting” question allows you to dig deeper while clearly letting the other person know that you are interested and that you care.
Richard Brooke, CEO of Oxyfresh, told me a wonderful story that illustrates the power of this aspect of asking questions.
A few years ago, an editor at Psychology Today magazine created a unique test. He got a first-class ticket on a direct flight from New York to San Francisco. His plan was to take a seat, strike up a conversation with the person next to him, and for the entire flight (about six hours) he would keep the person engaged in the conversation, offering nothing about himself. He would only ask questions. At the other extreme, his team of investigators would interview the subject of the editor’s questions to get the answer from him.
When the plane landed in San Francisco, the publisher’s seatmate was interviewed and said two revealing things about the man sitting next to him:
First, when asked what the publisher’s name was. The man replied, “God, I didn’t get his name…”
When asked what he thought of the man who had sat next to him, the editor who had not said anything about himself but only asked questions replied, “He is the most interesting man I have ever met in my life!”
So much for “The more you count, the more you sell.” At least, that is, if your intention is for someone to “sell themselves.”
Some Classic Revealers
The following questions have long been appreciated by motivation and human potential coaches as great “truth tellers.” They’re not the kind you drop at first. You’ll need to build rapport first, then you can use it to reveal a lot of things important and dear to the person you’re talking to.
- “If you won the lottery today, $10 million tax free, what would you do tomorrow?”
- “If you had six months to live, what would you do with the time you had left?”
- “What are you best known for?”
- “If money wasn’t an issue, what would you do for a living?”
- “Imagine you were delivering the eulogy at your own funeral, what would you say about your life?”
In general, these are pretty juicy questions: that is, they have a lot of energy (juice) in them. They are almost impossible to take lightly, and when you intend to find a fit between a prospect and their opportunity, questions like these will allow the conversation to ground in the real values of the honest individual and lead to certainty.
And an important note: the questions above are NOT things to ask right away. You will need to earn the right and permission of the other person to ask such “personal” and probing questions.
Thou shalt not manipulate
The eleventh commandment, which was a Post-it that fell off the tablets that Moses brought down from the mountain, was “Thou shalt not tamper.”
One of the delightful things about all the above questions is that by their very nature, being value-based and truth-seeking, they tend to make manipulation (by either side) quite difficult. Of course, if one is determined to himself prior agenda, the truth can come crooked no matter what; keeping the 11th Commandment is the best thing to do.
Getting someone into the business against their will or their better judgment is quite doable, because the rewards we offer have such broad appeal. Everyone wants extra income, freedom, more control over their life and work, a network of supportive and understanding friends, the opportunity to live their dreams. But recruiting is not sponsoring. A name on a distributor application is like the head of an arrow. Without the energy of the bow and the driving force of the shaft, you won’t get very far.
The goal of every smart network marketer is to sponsor the right people: right for their opportunity, right for the products, for whom now is the right time. The purpose of all the above questions is to establish that.
It is also up to them to establish that for themselves.
You can draw all the amazing conclusions you want FOR someone, but the best you can get out of it is their agreement. If they are the ones who are discovering and concluding, you will end up with a man or woman of great conviction. And what comes out of that self-discovery is a deep commitment and wholehearted intent that will ensure your MLM success!
And a real key to network marketing success is The Law of Great Questions.
Thank you.
I appreciate you.
–John