“It’s not what you tell people. It’s what you ask them.” However, not all questions are created equal. In today’s podcast, Tasha shares two questions that are game-changers in your network marketing business.
Listen here, or read the outline below.
There is such a thing as bad questions that bother people, and good questions that are helpful for people. And when we think about asking questions as either working in helping them get their product or helping our team members, we think of influence. And when we ask questions, what we really want to be able to do is help the other person come up with the best answer that works for them, to engage them in their thought process.
So here are two questions that I’ve recently learned from leaders that have abilities that are superior to mine, and they’ve blown my mind, and they really, really helped me in both areas from a sales and enrollment perspective and also from a leadership perspective.
So I’m going to give you the two questions real quick.
First question is: how will reaching this goal impact your overall quality of life? So, I’m going to give props to my business coach, Heather, for this one. And then the second one is: how will you hold yourself accountable to these action items? And so props on this one goes to Karen Hammond, who is one of our leadership coaches with Emerge.
So let me go ahead and go through why these questions are awesome, when to use them, and what to do if you don’t get a great response.
First question: how will reaching this goal impact your overall quality of life? So when do you talk about this? Well, this will go after either your sales conversation, or a business overview, or recruiting conversation.
At the beginning of your conversation, you may ask them, “Tell me more about your goals. Tell me about your health goals.” Or if it’s a sales situation, “Tell me about your income goals.” That’s a good start, and then we say, “Tell me more. What else? What else? What else?” and then follow that up with this question: “How will reaching this goal impact your overall quality of life?”
Here’s why this is important: people don’t care about the goal necessarily. They care about how the goal will impact their ability to have a better life. So if someone says, “Well here’s my health challenge: I want to be able to sleep better.” Well, how will this impact your overall quality of life? And then you get into the real stuff, and this is to help them to understand why this is important. It’s also a way to demonstrate that we care.
I did this in a complementary coaching call recently. I was just meeting with this most amazing, amazing person, and so we talked a little bit about her income goals and her goals for her business, and then I asked this question: “how will reaching this goal impact your overall quality of life?” And you could see her eyes light up, and she started to talk about how it would mean she would get to go visit her grandchildren.
Are you kidding me right now?? That’s the good stuff. It’s not about, “Oh, I’m going to make $5,000 a month.” Like, “That’s so great!” People are not motivated by money. They’re motivated by what the money can buy them, which is typically relationships or status or freedom. And so we need to ask that follow-up question: how will reaching this goal impact your overall quality of life?
Now if they aren’t sure, all you have to do is play it cool. “Okay. No problem. I just wanted to ask because I really care about getting to know you,” and then just move on to the next section. You’ll be good.
The second question: how will you hold yourself accountable? And when you use this is at the end of a coaching call, so your team member says, “Okay. These are my goals. This is what I’m going to do to reach my goals the next couple weeks” or whatever the case may be. And then you can follow up with this question: “How will you hold yourself accountable to this goal?”
Why this question is awesome is because people want accountability, but they also want autonomy. Like, when I coach someone, I tell them I don’t do accountability because I don’t want to babysit them, right? I’m trying to develop leaders, and this question is just so much better because what we do as leaders sometimes is say something like, “How can I hold you accountable?” Well then, it just positions us as the nag, and they’ll say something like, “Well check in with me” or whatever, and then you’ll check in with them, and then they won’t do it because they don’t like the nagging piece.
So people want accountability, and they want autonomy, and so when we turn this question around, it puts the ball in their court. We can say, “How are you going to hold yourself accountable?” Some people, I’ve heard say, “Well, I just need to write it in my planner. That’ll be enough.” And then they do it. Some people will say, “I need to send you a message when I’ve done it.” Some people need to say, “I need to post it in a Facebook group or I’m not going to have that community accountability.” And I just think this is so awesome.
Another key insight on this is that what works for one person from accountability does not work for another, and sometimes we get caught up in, “Okay. I want everyone to fill out this accountability tracker and send it to me Friday afternoon.” Now, if you need that communication, that’s one thing, but if you’re just trying to get at holding them accountable, well what if they hate trackers? And if they hate that, and you tell them, “You need to send it,” then it’s going to break down some of your trust.
But if you turned it around and said, “What do you need to do to hold yourself accountable to these goals,” and they say, “You know what, I need to send this to you,” then it’s going to be a completely different relationship, and I think that’s really, really, really cool. Or if they don’t know what they need to do to hold themselves accountable, you can say, “Well, other people have said…” and then you can give them a few options and they can choose one.
And that one, they’re owning the decision because unfortunately, or fortunately, we’re not their bosses. We can’t fire them. We can’t do that. What we have to do is we have to build their autonomy and their independence by helping them to get stronger, right? So if you were a personal trainer, you would have someone go to a gym, you would do the same exercises over and over to build their strength. And that’s what this question does.
Now, if you want to learn more about asking better questions, we do have a Questions Course. It’s only $17. It is geared towards the sales process, but they can adjust to leadership as well, but it’s a short course. It’s awesome. It’ll help you to really understand the different kind of questions that you can ask to people. So just click on the link above there, and you can register for that and start watching that right away, if you want to continue this conversation.
Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this video, and have a great day.