Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Secret of Questions
The Ultimate Method of Irresistible Persuasion
By Keith William
Introduction
For those readers who have gone head to head with a
prospective customer and found that an enthusiastic de-
scription of the wonderful features and benefits of your
Keith Williams was an entrepreneur product did not persuade, did not win the business. This
who spent over 35 years creating and
developing small businesses. He was
article is for you.
a disciplined self-starter working from For those readers who do not need to go head to head
home to a regular schedule, using with customers but who do need to persuade bosses, col-
skills learned during his training leagues, or financiers of the wonderful features and ben-
as naval officer.
efits of your ideas or plans. This article is for you.
His warm, charismatic disposition and This article explains how we can all become irre-
sense of humor helped him easily sistible persuaders; get a 100 percent sales strike rate,
build a rapport with new clients. His
personal strength lay in understanding
get ideas and plans accepted and adopted or raise the
the risks and pitfalls in setting up and finance required for start-ups and projects.
running a successful business. This article describes, explains, and teaches a meth-
During his life, Keith attained a wealth odology that has solid roots in our psychology and relies
of academic awards, returning to on our automatic, subconscious reaction to stimulus, the
University on three occasions, which study of which is called ethology. A coaching client who
gave him the rare distinction of being learned the basic method described it as life changing
both a master mariner and business
administrator. Something that is life changing we might expect to be
Expert Insights 1
Selling Successfully and the Secret of Questions
complicated and difficult but this method is a structure, a series of protocols, a pro-
is really very simple; this is how it works: gression, and the building of a persuasive
platform of agreement with checks and
Every individual, group, firm, or or- loopbacks. Follow this structure, building
ganization, lets describe them as agreement piecemeal, and you will master
organisms, have needs. the only irresistible technique for sales and
Every organism is hard wired to seek persuasion.
to satisfy its own need.
Anything offering a satisfaction of Part 1
need without apparent risk is au-
tomatically, irresistibly desirable. What Makes a Successful Sales Person?
In this article you will learn how to David Meyer and Herbert Greenberg, psy-
identify a need, how to adapt your chologists, were hired by the life insurance
offer to satisfy the need and have industry in the United States to discover
those with the need automatically why some salesmen, they were all men in
desire what you offer. They will au- those days, appeared to be much more ef-
tomaticallysay YES to you. fective than the majority, despite the same
training, financial incentives, and moti-
The real secret lies in how we persuade vation. The results of their research were
others to say YES to us. At this point you, published by the Harvard Business Review
the reader, need to come to a momentous in 1964 and again in 2006.
realization by answering the first ques- In the 2006 article, American industrial
tion, this answer is the key to the secret psychologist, Robert N. McMurry, a pro-
knowledge. lific author on the subject of selling com-
To signify agreement, acceptance, and mented, ...A very high proportion of those
giving permission, we use a single word engaged in selling cannot sell.
YES. Meyer and Greenberg discovered that
Even if you have never previously the outstanding sales people had two per-
thought of this, think now, is the last state- sonality traits the others did not have. In
ment correct? fact the two are rarely found together. The
This is the life-changing conundrum. essential personality traits were found
There is only one way we can say yes. tobe:
There is only one way we can give agree-
ment, acceptance, or permission. Only one Empathy. a description of a high level of
way we can say YES. emotional capacity, the experience of
understanding another persons condi-
The life-changing question: what tion from their perspective.
is the one and only way we can Ego Drive. Psychologists link drive and
say YES? determination with the ego but for us
Ego Drive is the need to win.
We only say YES in answer to
a question. Psychologists tell us we cannot fake em-
pathy or ego drive; accordingly if they are
Customers, bosses, colleagues, and fi- not part of your natural personality you
nanciers will always say yes to us if we ask will fail in sales.
a question to confirm we are offering to
satisfy a need. Much later in this instruc- Not True.
tion you will hear this referred to as The As part of this learning exercise you will
Closing Question. Between here and there realize that if we can become committed to
2 Expert Insights
Selling Successfully and the Secret of Questions
Expert Insights 3