Encore: Questioning Skills

enjoy this encore presentation of the make it happen monday podcast hey everybody it's john barrows with make it happen mondays thank you so much for joining us reviewing this on the back end or the podcast for those of you 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 uh the patriots looking like absolute dog shit uh this weekend against the panthers um pats are obviously aren't as uh as good as they thought they were coming into the season or as good as anybody thought they were in getting into the season but i guess the silver lining on this one is uh what it got me to think about as far as a topic for today's make it happen monday 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 um you know sandler or 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 ass whooping by the pats and yeah michael uh 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 uh 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 bill belichick specifically um it absolutely amazes me i you know i watch a lot of sports basketball baseball all that stuff and um it absolutely amazes me that these 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 at a 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 um 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 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 uh on cam newton did you see any did you see any difference in his play uh between the first and the second half is uh belichick's answer he was a good player uh critique could you give oh no here's one yeah 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 asked being asked questions after they got absolutely annihilated in one of the games in the playoffs and the questions that people were asking were so bad that he was just yes no and then he 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 and he just looked at the guy like you could tell he probably knew him and he just looked at him he 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 if i 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 uh he'll open up about lacrosse and then you 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 you good luck getting anything 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 to 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 are 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 with our clients um specifically when we're sitting down and talking to executives i it mar 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 making 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 close-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 uh but then there's layering questions and layering questions those are when you know i i'm actually a huge fan of layering questions it's it's to try to get to the real understanding whatever the issue is so as an example again for those of you been out there with the sam right similar talks about the pain funnel first layer pain second layer pain third layer pain a lot of that just has to do with 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 uh we haven't hit our target uh that's why we want sales training uh 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's that personal level of pain that you can hone in on same thing with spin 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 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 help me understand what do you mean by that do you mean you literally have no money as a business uh 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 like 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 my nature and obviously sometimes i've given answers that aren't the right ones or uh you know if i 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 there's also two categories where it's um you know pleasure questions and pain questions right pleasure question or pain questions are what most of us are taught to ask where we we're trying to dig for pain right and that's kind of in the form of challenges all kind of challenges you face within these areas and you know the goal is to find pain and then 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 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 uh pleasure is 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 um and you've got to be paying attention to what people like to talk about right you don't 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 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 those 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 um you know vps and c-level executives when i talk to them i talk a lot about 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 uh they see down the pipeline you know i was uh on snapchat the other day uh by the way if you want to hit me up with questions make sure they're good ones hit me up on snapchat uh john m as in michael barrows that's the handle feel free to hit it yeah i got probably five ten questions a day from kids asking me questions as i walk through airports and i can hopefully give some pretty good knowledge around that um it's easier than me writing emails by the way so please snap me instead of emailing me but um you know i snapped this question the other day as i was preparing for a meeting and i think it's a it's an interesting question to ask almost anybody at a senior level which is where do you see this industry going 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 asking 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 ten 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 you're 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 where they're going as an organization if they're a publicly traded company look at their 10k or annual report to think about you know where the ceo and the cfo outlined what their goals were for the next quarter or so you know talk about that follow trends in the industry that you're following right 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 food industry right not just retail i'm sorry 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 is eating 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 because 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 in 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 because 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 that 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 that i can't believe they didn't yeah obviously they did a bunch of stuff online but who wants to go to a kids store these days are you out of your mind right that that's like 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 i'd much rather do that online but if reach you know if retail uh 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 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 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 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 um 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 and manufacturing and they tell us that you know moving into 2017 and some are 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 the fact that you showed that you put some thought into your question um tends to open up the conversation a lot more and also the 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 pause 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 gotta 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's 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 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 photocopies 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 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 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 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 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 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 that 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 because 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 okay you know here's another one i ask early on in the sales process hey what's the best way to communicate with you moving forward is it emails it sells the text is what is it and usually they say you say email they 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 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 uh 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 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 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 ten 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 okay 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 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 okay 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 dreamforce 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 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 dreamforce come on out and meet up with us because it'll be fun we're going to be doing the sales summit on uh the first or on the first day of dreamforce 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 gonna 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 gonna be announcing that at the end of october and also gonna 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 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 because we need to because we all need each other on this in this wonderful world in 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 late you you you you you you you you you you you Thank you.