27: Questioning Skills

Hey everybody, it's Jon Barrows with Make It Happen Mondays. Thank you so much for joining us or viewing this on the back end or the podcast for those of you who listen to it that way. I hope you all had a good weekend and are ready to get after it this week as usual. I had a good weekend. It's set for the Patriots looking like absolute dog shit this weekend against the Panthers. Pats obviously aren't as good as they thought they were coming into the season or as good as anybody thought they were getting into the season. But I guess the silver lining on this one is what it got me to think about as far as a topic for today's Make It Happen Mondays. And it revolves around questioning skills. Now I've been training a lot.

I've been, you know, over the past 20 years or so I've been selling a lot and over the past 10 years I've been training a lot. And one of the things that is blatantly obvious to me, I don't care how experienced anybody is in sales, the number one skill we can all get better at is questioning, is asking better questions to uncover that answer. I mean, if anybody's ever been through, you know, Sandler or spin selling or any of that stuff, a lot of that has to do with just asking better questions to get to the root of the problem or to get the client at least talking about what their situation is. And it's amazing to me, for instance, how many people ask close-ended questions, like some of the fundamental stuff.

It's amazing to me how they will, you know, they ask close-ended questions when it comes to discovery. And that's what, like I said, the silver lining of today's or this past weekend's Ask Women by the Pats. And yeah, Michael, they will, I know they'll get out of the division. Thank God we're in the AFC East because every other team sucks and the Bills, come on, you're not going to be that good for that long. So anyways, but the silver lining here is always watching the press conference after a Patriots win or loss, specifically losses, to watch the stupid-ass questions that interviewers ask Bill Belichick specifically. It absolutely amazes me, you know, I watch a lot of sports, basketball, baseball, all that stuff.

And it absolutely amazes me that these reporters, if you will, get paid to do what they do. I mean, they're supposed to be reporters and asking good questions, get good insights from the players and the coaches and all that other stuff. But inevitably, when you walk out, when you watch one of those, like going into the halftime for an NBA game or, you know, between innings in a baseball, they ask the dumbest-ass questions like, you know, if a team's getting smoked going into halftime, they'll say, so how do you think your team's doing today? You know, what do you need to do in the second half to get better? It's like, what kind of fucking stupid question is that? So, you know, they typically get stupid answers.

And nobody's better at making people feel stupid based on the questions that they ask than Bill Belichick. And so, I actually listened to his post-game interview a couple of times, and I wrote down some of the dumb-ass questions. And listen to this. On Cam Newton, did you see any difference in his play between the first and the second half? Belichick's answer, he was a good player. Critique, could you give, oh no, here's one. Is there any explanation for this? Belichick's answer, no. Is there any commonality between the losses that you've had? No. Belichick's answer. Was there any thought into, no. Do you see this as a coaching or a player problem? Both. Every single, yeah, Popovich, again, Michael nailed it.

I actually wrote a post on this a long time ago where Popovich, there was a scene where Popovich was being asked questions after they got absolutely annihilated in one of the games in the playoffs. And the questions that people were asking him were so bad that he was just, yes, no. And then there was a part where he actually looked in the crowd, or you could tell he looked at a reporter that he saw in the front. And he just looked at the guy, you could tell he probably knew him. And he just looked at him and kind of put his hands up. He's like, what do you want me to say here? He's like, these are the dumbest fucking questions I've ever heard. And so, looking at the questions, I counted 15 questions, okay?

I'm sorry, 12 questions that were asked by Belichick, to Belichick. Eight of them were close-ended questions. Is there, is there, was there, did you? If you want somebody to talk, now, don't get me wrong, I think it's almost impossible to ask Bill Belichick a question that he's going to open up on. If you really want to do that, by the way, you have to know him. You have to ask about lacrosse. He'll open up about lacrosse, and then you'll have to ask him about the kicking game. Those are the two things that he actually gets very passionate about, and he'll talk in detail about. But other than that, good luck getting any intel out of him, because he's just, he has no tolerance for people who ask stupid questions.

But especially close-ended questions. You know, even Brady, I listened to his interview, there was nine questions asked of Brady, and five of them were close-ended questions. Again, if you want to, this is sales 101 stuff, ladies and gentlemen. You know, if you want somebody to talk, you at least have to ask them open-ended questions to get them talking a little bit, and ideally about things that they care about that'll make them feel good or get them talking about some stuff, all right? It's the same way with our clients, specifically when we're sitting down and talking to executives. I'm still marveled by how many, when I sit in on calls or I sit on disco calls or something like that with clients, and reps asking these questions, they ask very close-ended questions.

During the discovery phase, and I will tell you, there's only one population on the planet that answers close-ended questions with open-ended answers, and it's sales reps. We are legit the only ones, when asked a yes or no question, will say yes, but, and then go on for the next 45 minutes about something completely irrelevant. Most other people, when asked a yes or no question, will say yes or no. And so, I mean, open-ended, closed-ended questions, that's fundamental basics there, but we need to pay attention to that. That's also why, by the way, preparing your questions in advance is really important, so you're not just trying to come up with them on the fly. Going into meetings with prepared questions.

But then there's layering questions. And layering questions, those are when, you know, I'm actually a huge fan of layering questions. It's to try to get to the real understanding, whatever the issue is. So as an example, again, for those of you who've been out there with Sandler, right? Sandler talks about the pain funnel. First layer of pain, second layer of pain, third layer of pain. A lot of that just has to do with layering questions and getting to the real meat of what that pain really is, right? Because, you know, the concept there is they're going to give you some surface-level pain. Oh, we haven't hit our target. That's why we want sales training. Oh, well, what does that mean if you don't hit your target, right?

Help me understand a little bit more about that layering. Well, if we don't hit our target, then we're not going to get our, you know, next round of funding, or it's not going to be as high as we want it to. Okay, well, what does that mean to you, right? And that's that personal level of pain that you can hone in on. Same thing with spin. And all that stuff is really trying to understand what the client's real needs are. So layering questions are in the form of explain to me how, or could you give me an example of, or could you clarify for me how? And by the way, that's also an objection handling technique. So it's called the clarification technique. When somebody says, for instance, I don't have any, we don't have any budget for this.

You say, well, help me understand. What do you mean by that? Do you mean you literally have no money as a business, or this isn't a budgeted thing, or you're just spending money in other areas that you think is more important than this, right? Help me understand that. Those are three very different objections, by the way. And so that clarification or that those layering questions, if you will, are critical. And I've actually used them to help slow myself down a little bit because my inclination, when you ask me a question, is to immediately answer whatever your question is. That's just my nature. And obviously, sometimes I've given answers that aren't the right ones, or if I had thought about them a little bit more, I'd probably be able to come up with a much better answer.

So I've purposely put layering questions in place for me to slow myself down a little bit, but also, again, to understand the real meaning. Now, those are the categories of questions to think about, open, close, and layering, okay? The other component here, though, is the types of questions we ask. You know, there's also two categories where it's, you know, pleasure questions and pain questions, right? Pleasure questions or pain questions are what most of us are taught to ask. We're trying to dig for pain, right? And that's kind of in the form of challenges, right? What kind of challenges do you face within these areas? And, you know, the goal is to find pain and then jump on it and try to fix it.

But we also need to make sure that we are, we don't ignore pleasure. Let's put it that way. Because pleasure is kind of more about the future, right? Pain is usually about today or yesterday, which is why people below the power line are typically in pain, right? Where people above the power line are typically focused on tomorrow, which is usually pleasure. And so I try to ask both pleasure and pain questions, right? Pleasure is more in the form of, hey, what kind of opportunities are you seeing here as it relates to this? And the goal there is, again, to get you talking because that's what I want to do. At the end of the day, my goal in a sales call is to get you talking and direct that conversation so I can get as much out of you as possible so I can share with you exactly the components of my solution that are going to make the biggest difference.

And you've got to be paying attention to what people like to talk about, right? You don't ask low-level questions to senior-level executives. For instance, you know, I'm not going to ask a CEO of an organization what their average deal size is, what their conversion ratios are, you know, and what their onboarding process looks like. They don't want to talk about that. They have people that are in place who have those answers. And those aren't things that they typically think, you know, on a day-to-day basis about. There's managers and directors who care about those type of things. They do. But executives, C-levels, and VPs usually are thinking way ahead of the game, or at least they should be.

So for executives and, you know, VPs and C-level executives, when I talk to them, I talk a lot more about what's happening in the industry and where their business is going, what are some of the biggest challenges that they're facing as an organization, or what are some of the biggest opportunities they face, they see down the pipeline. You know, I was on Snapchat the other day. By the way, if you want to hit me up with questions, make sure they're good ones, hit me up on Snapchat. John M. as in Michael Barrows, that's the handle. Feel free to hit it. You know, I got probably five, ten questions a day from kids asking me questions as I walk through airports, and I hopefully give some pretty good knowledge around that.

It's easier than me writing emails, by the way, so please snap me instead of emailing me. But, you know, I snapped this question the other day as I was preparing for a meeting, and I think it's an interesting question to ask almost anybody at a senior level, which is where do you see this industry going, and what are the biggest challenges you see as it relates to your industry? And hopefully you've done some homework beforehand, right? You don't want to just come in and ask a blind, stupid question. You want to come in with some context around it to say, you know, hey, for instance, artificial intelligence for me, right? You know, if you've been watching me or reading my blogs or whatever, you know that artificial intelligence is something I am fascinated with, because I think artificial intelligence is going to change everything.

That and virtual reality, right? Virtual reality and artificial intelligence, two things I'm fascinated with. I think they're going to impact every single industry. And if you're not thinking about it now, you better be, okay? So I ask executives that question a lot, which is, so help me understand right now in this industry, like where are things going right now? And how do you see artificial intelligence impacting this industry over the next five to 10 years? And, you know, based on that answer, what are you going to do to help prepare yourself as an organization to get there, right? Or your sales team, right? Because I can parlay that into a conversation about the impact I'm seeing artificial intelligence having on sales reps.

And then talk about my training as it relates to that. But that question about getting people fired up about, not fired up, but getting them to talk about something that's a lot higher level is where you tend to see them start to open up and give you their real insights about the challenges they see, the opportunities that they're out there. And that's where you can hone in on that stuff and really kind of tie, hopefully pick out something that they talk about and tie your solution to it to help them get there. Either help them get there from a pleasure standpoint and where they want to go, or help them address one of the challenges that they see their organization is going to face based on where things are going, right?

So I'm just, you know, a couple of things here from a takeaway standpoint, you know, really just, I would recommend you prepare your questions in advance, at least two or three questions that are outside your typical normal, you know, qualification questions, like, you know, whatever the band stuff that you got to find out, fine. Those are great, but you come up with two or three that are based on some research that you did on their website, you know, go on their news and events, try to find something of, of where they're going as an organization. If they're a publicly traded company, look at their 10 care and your report to think about, you know, where the CEO and the CFO outlined what their goals were for the next quarter.

So, you know, talk about that. Follow trends in the industry that you're following right now. Now, as an example, um, uh, Toys R Us. So retail right now, here's a perfect example, right? Retail. When, um, Amazon bought whole foods that sent shockwaves through the industry, through the retail industry alone, not just the, the, the food industry, right? Not just retail. I'm sorry. You know, grocery stores and stuff like that. But that sent shockwaves through the entire retail industry because, you know, Amazon's obviously this behemoth that is, that has eaten up a lot of mom and pop shops and everything else. And, but, you know, you still got Walmart out there beating them up, you know, trying to fight that fight.

But when they bought whole foods, like nobody ever looked at Amazon as a way to, you know, for food, right? Cause it was like, okay, yeah, maybe I'll buy some canned stuff or some non-perishable things. But as soon as they bought whole foods, it was like, holy shit. Now all of a sudden Amazon is legitimate in the food industry, right? And, and, and especially in the grocery chain and retail shop industry, you know, you think, okay, retail, uh, clothing for instance. Well, yeah, not too many people go to Amazon to buy clothes. Um, but as soon, cause they, they don't have a really strong reputation for that. But as soon as they go out and they buy coach or Burberry or whoever that is, they immediately become validated in that industry.

And now what are you going to do, right? Toys R Us is a perfect example here. You know, that industry, they had so many opportunities to, to capitalize and, and, and see what was happening in front of them. Um, as far as what was happening with Amazon, but also the, you know, they were a niche player. They were a niche. Hey, we just sold toys to kids and I can't believe they didn't change their stores. I can't believe they didn't. Yeah. Obviously they did a bunch of stuff online, but who wants to go to a kid's store these days? Are you out of your mind? Right. That that's the most painful thing I could imagine is going to a Toys R Us on a Saturday or Sunday to look for toys for a kid's present.

Like that just is a nightmare to me. And I'd much rather do that online, but if reach, you know, if retail, uh, if, if for them, they started to evolve and they started to do stuff like some, you know, cool events at, uh, at their stores or became, you know, whatever. I mean, pick a, pick a toy that has some popularity to it, run contests around it, or even like all the gaming systems, right? Why wouldn't you be like the VR capital for gaming systems at Toys R Us where people could come and have contests or something, anything like that just evolve. Right. But they didn't. And so right now with, with Toys R Us going out of business with Amazon buying Whole Foods, if I'm meeting with somebody in the retail industry in general, I'm bringing those things up, especially specifically on the executive side of the house.

I'm bringing those things up and I'm asking, so what, what do you think happened to, you know, Toys R Us? Why didn't they evolve and why are they going chapter 11 right now to an executive in that field and see what their perspective was. And then obviously talk to them about what they're doing as a business to help them evolve and, and, and make sure that doesn't happen to them. And then ideally tie my solution to that. All right. So think about the way we ask questions and try not to ask stupid questions, you know, like, or make statements like, tell me about your business or tell me about your priorities or any of that stuff. You know, I'm embarrassed to say the majority of my career, you know, I've always been a priority based seller, but you know, the way I used to get to that was, so tell me about your priorities.

And looking back on that, I used to get very vague answers, like revenue, right? Let me show you how I could impact your revenue. Now I go in with at least some context around those questions to say, Hey, you know what? In preparation for our meeting today, I was actually doing some homework or I've been speaking with a lot of other CFOs in manufacturing. And they tell us that, you know, moving into 2017, summer 2018, you know, some of their top priorities are X, Y, and Z. Are those yours by any chance? You know, even if they're not, the fact that you showed that you put some thought into your question tends to open up the conversation a lot more. And also a very important point here is to make sure you always have a reason for your, for your question.

Right. Because, you know, I've been caught before where I thought I asked a really thoughtful, intelligent question to get somebody talking. And, you know, halfway through their question, they paused and we're like, Oh, I'm sorry. Hold on a second. Why do you need to know that based on our conference, like based on what we're here to talk about? You know, why do you need to know that? And there's been a few times where I've been like, uh, like deer in headlights, just, uh, I don't know. I just want to get to talking here. Uh, but now I'm very conscious. I pretend every time I make a, every time I ask a question, I pretend like the person I'm asking the question is going to flip it right back on me and say, why do you need to know that?

And I got to have a good reason. Sometimes I'll even preempt it with the reason because, you know, clients sometimes are very cautious on what they tell sales reps because they don't want to uncover too much because they're afraid the sales rep is going to pounce on it and try to sell them on something. Um, so inherently they're a little hesitant to give up too much information when they're answering questions. And so that's why a lot of times I give a reason why I'm asking the question. Uh, I learned this through the book influence. I've talked about this before the book influence by Robert Cialdini. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend going and taking a look at it. Just go on Amazon and type in, uh, influence.

And they talk about the power of giving people reasons, right? So the study has a group of people lined up to make a photocopies on a, on a copy machine. And this, the first part of the study, the guy walks in front of the line and just cuts everybody in line and says, Hey, can I make some copies? Doesn't give any reason. Just says, Hey, can I make some copies? And the majority of people like, uh, no dude, like that's why, that's why we're all in line here. We're all looking to make copies. And then, so the second part of the study was they took a separate group, uh, in a separate line and the guy, the same guy cut in line. And, uh, he gave a reason this time. And so, and by the way, it didn't matter what the reason was.

Okay. So he walked in front and said, Hey, can I make some copies? Because I need to make some copies. And everybody was, well, duh. Right. But, but as long as he gave a reason, uh, people let him through, like most people let him through. So that to me is important when it has, when I come, when it comes to, for me asking questions to clients is, you know, so what's your average deal size? What's your average conversion? I mean, those are basic ones, but you know, or let's go back to the industry stuff. Uh, how do you see artificial intelligence impacting this industry? And where do you think it's going? I gotta, you know, C level executive be like, well, John, why? I thought we were here to talk about sales training.

Like, why are you asking me that question? Well, first of all, I'm interested in your response, but, but second of all, the reason I'm asking is because I see artificial intelligence affecting every business out there. And I think there's some jobs that are going to be a completely obsolete and that doesn't, um, that also includes sales sales teams. Right. And so I'm seeing a lot of the tools out there of artificial intelligence impacting sales. And I wanted to get your mindset on, on, on the impact you see that having on your industry and therefore your team, therefore your company and therefore your team. So that's why I'm asking that question. And again, sometimes I preempt it. So the, it would go, Hey, so what's, so where do you see artificial intelligence?

How do you see that impacting your, this industry right now? The reason I ask is because I'm trying to get a better perspective on where your head's at as it relates to artificial intelligence. Cause I'm paying attention to a lot of the things that are affecting organizations and come in sales reps within those organizations. So I just kind of wanted to see where your head was at and how you're looking at leveraging it. Or, you know, if you think it's even really that big of a deal moving forward, when you give someone reasons, they, Oh, okay. You know, uh, here's another one. I asked early on in the sales process, Hey, what's the best way to communicate with you moving forward? Is it emails that sells the text is what is it?

And usually they say, you say email and say, okay, great. Look, um, as we go through this process together, I promise you, I'll get back to you within 24 hours. If you need something from me, you know, what should I expect from you? The reason I ask is because I don't want to be the annoying sales rep here. Okay. You tell me to wait a week. I'll wait a week. All right. I just want to make sure that I follow up on what the expectation should be here. And when I tell somebody, the reason I ask is because I don't want to be the annoying sales rep most of the time. Yeah. You know what, John, if you haven't heard from me in a week, I'm going to ping me, excuse me, you know, here's my cell phone or whatever.

Okay. So give people reasons, make sure you have a reason and ask at least two or three questions that are a little bit higher level than you would have asked before. Right. Most of us dive right into, Hey, what do you do for this? And what do you do for that? Like, you know, the qualification stuff. I hope nobody out there is following Bant too prescriptively, if you will, you know, not just saying, do you have budget? You know, what's your timeline? Are you the person and, you know, has the authority to do this? Hopefully you're smoothing that out a little bit and you're not disqualifying too many opportunities too early on. You know, the only thing I care about, by the way, and Bant is need.

If you can give me, if I can find a real genuine need for whatever I'm selling, then, you know, I can expedite timeline. I can, I can get to power if I need to. I can find budget if we have to. So, you know, hopefully you're not just going through the motions with that, but even if you do, uh, at least try to start off the conversation with one or two questions that are higher level based on some of your homework. Uh, it doesn't take too long either. Like I said, pop on there and news and events, take a look at their, you know, something's happened in the past six months and phrase that as an open ended question. Sometimes I'll even preface it with in preparation for our meeting today, I was on your website and I saw this and I was really curious how that's impacting what we're trying to accomplish here or, you know, to help me understand a little bit more about what that's doing for your organization.

Right. And, and I want, uh, I want somebody to, if you've ever been in a meeting and within five, 10 minutes, they say, wow, you've done your homework, right? If you've ever been in one of those meetings, you know exactly what I mean by that. And you know exactly the difference that makes to the conversation and to the dialogue. All of a sudden somebody's sitting up in their chair, they're, they're engaged in the conversation and that's the other thing is you got to get them talking, right? If you, if you just keep asking close ended questions, they keep answering close ended ways and you're not engaging and getting them to talk about things they love talking about, then the likelihood is it's going to be a pretty one-sided conversation and you know, there's strong likelihood you're not going to understand what you need to understand so that you can develop the solution for them and therefore your follow-up is going to be pretty meaningless.

So in summary, I don't know if anybody has any questions, but I'm going to be finishing up today. I got to bounce off a little bit early today to do a session with another client here. But, um, if you do feel free to pop them in, but, uh, in summary, ask, you think through the questions that you're going to ask, practice question handling, you know, question skills, uh, see what type of answers, write down the questions that you asked beforehand. And then after you get out of that meeting, make sure that you kind of highlight the ones that got a conversation going. Uh, make sure you have a reason for your call, reason for your email calls or emails, but also make sure you have a reason for your questions and, and try to, you know, level up a little bit, right?

Level up a little bit. Don't go crazy with it, but level up. Uh, and also layering questions, make sure you use those and, uh, pleasure and pain. Remember always got to look for pain because that's a lot of times why people are talking to us, but don't ignore pleasure. So with that, um, one final note here I am doing, uh, next week. So I think it's on the 9th, October 9th, I'm doing a, uh, make it happen Mondays with two of my favorite people, Trish Bertuzzi from the bridge group and Doug Landis, uh, from Emergence Capital. And we are actually doing a session at dream force coming up in a few weeks or actually in about a month here. And we're going to be talking about artificial intelligence.

Like I was just saying earlier in this conversation and talking about the impact on sales and what we should be paying attention to in sales. You know, I've gone all the way from totally freaking out about artificial intelligence to really like, yeah, okay. Is it really that big of a deal as it relates to sales? And Doug is super knowledgeable about it. Uh, Trish is actually using some of the tools, uh, like chorus and that type of thing with her, um, company. And so artificial intelligence does have an impact for her. And for me, I'm just curious, you know, I'm just sitting there going, all right, what I want to talk to people who are smarter than me in this area and, and have a dialogue on what I really should be caring about these days.

So hopefully you can join us, uh, if not look for it after the fact. And if you're going to dream for us, come on out and meet up with us. Cause it'll be fun. We're going to be doing the sales summit on, uh, the first or on the first day of dream for us, which is Monday, the November 6th. Okay. And last but not least, I have a couple of very cool announcements coming up here soon. So please pay attention. Uh, I'm going to be doing, I'm hiring somebody finally, finally, finally decided to bring somebody on, uh, to go out there and do some training. So I'm going to be announcing that at the end of October and also going to be, uh, launching my new online course for driving to close to help everybody close out the year strong.

So keep an eye out for that one as well. All right. All right, everybody. Um, final thought here, try to make somebody smile today. There's some, uh, some depressing shit that happened on the news this morning in Vegas. Uh, we all got to keep coming together here. Don't just pray for people. Do something about it. All right. Go out there and make somebody happy. Go try to, you know, get into a dialogue with somebody to, to understand where they're coming from. And let's stop yelling at each other and start to start trying to turn this thing around. Cause we need to, cause we all need each other on this, uh, in this wonderful world and this wonderful life that we're going through. All right. So make somebody happy today and make it a fantastic week.

All right. Make it happen. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.