Finding Massive Pain For Change

Finding Massive Pain For Change

By Tony Cole

4 Ways to Know if You Have a Real Prospect

  1. The Rule of 3R
  2. Make sure YOU are asking the questions
  3. Ask who, what, when, where, how and why questions
  4. Constantly push for WHY

Play The Sales Brew:

Transcript:

By Tony Cole, President, Anthony Cole Training Group

When you start to ask them questions about what’s going on, what we call that is a pain indicator. It’s really not pain. They say, “You know, well, we’re concerned about… and we’ve had a little bit of a problem with… and we’ve been kicking around the idea… and we’re unhappy with…” All that stuff is very intellectual in nature, but it’s really not pain. The key factor here is you must get beyond the pain indicators.

I’ll quote Tony Robbins. Robbins says you must associate MASSIVE pain, not just some pain, not “I’d like to because it’s a little bit of a problem”. You must associate massive pain with not changing because ultimately people are going to have to make a change.

Well, you say, “Ok, Tony, I think intellectually this makes some sense to me, so how do I go about doing this?” This takes us right back to Sales 101. It’s not just Anthony Cole Training philosophy. It’s not just Brian Tracy stuff. It’s not just Zig Ziglar stuff. Anybody’s stuff that you pick up relative to sales are going to tell you the best way to find information is to ask questions.

Now I know you know that. The question becomes “Well, why aren’t we doing it?”

Well, we’re asking questions, but typically we’re asking questions the wrong way. And so we have another rule. It’s called the Rule of 3R. The Rule of 3R simply states, “Ask the right question, the right way, at the right time. “ Your questions should begin with WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, HOW and WHY.

As an example, when I show up to see you at your office, we sit down and talk, we do a little chit-chat stuff maybe about the weather, and the local ball club, whatever it might be. And within a very short period of time, I’m going to ask you, “Sally, last week when we spoke on the phone we talked about some things, if you don’t mind, what was it exactly that we said to each other that caused you to invite me out today.” So, I have this preamble to set up the question, “What was it that caused you to invite me out today?” THAT’S what sets the tone for the meeting. It isn’t, “Well, let me tell you about me and my company a little bit.” You know, that doesn’t make any sense.

They really don’t care about your company. They will eventually, if they decide that they have a problem that they want to fix. But right now, what they know is that they have scheduled an hour of their time. Chances are if they are taking an hour out of their busy schedule, there IS something on their mind that they would like to address and fix AND they want to figure out if you’re the person to do it. What you’ve got to do first is figure out what their problem is.

Now we’ve talked about this in our prior [brews] about the games the prospects play. What they want to do, what they are going to attempt to do, is cause you to be an unpaid consultant. And the way that they do that is to ask YOU questions. They’ll ask, “Well, listen, Tony, tell me about you and your company.” And we think, “Well, ok, that’s what they want to do.”

Our response should sound something like this: “Well, I can tell you lots of things about my company, Sally, but that’s kind of boring stuff, and I know you’ve got other things you need to be worrying about. But if you don’t mind, let me ask YOU some questions.” So, THIS sets the tone for the appointment. Out of all those questions, the who-what-when-where-how-and-why questions, the MOST important one of those is to constantly push and find out why. Why are they doing this? Why aren’t they doing that? Why is this important? Constantly, ask the question “Why?”