Episode #42: INGREDIENTS

So we're gonna do today is August 6th, 2020, my 37th. I should say our 37th anniversary, happy anniversary to my lovely wife, Monica, who, if you don't know my story, I had that little guy out about , uh , 39 years ago, hitchhike in and I met my wife, hitchhiking. Her boyfriend picked me up. They were on the Fritz long story short. I met her boom, 39 years later. Here we are. Right. So , uh , August 6th . So today's about questions.

And I'm gonna end this segment with the biggest question I forgot to ask, and you're gonna like it . You're gonna get a kick outta this one, but stick with it . So it's gonna be nice and easy, but questions. What are they, why do we, why do we need to ask questions? Why do we need to understand the importance of questions? Well, consider whatever you do consider that you're kind of like a baker. All right .

And you've got, you know , you've got all these different ingredients that you can, that you can tap into. Um, let's just say you , you are a deck builder, you've got a lot of different options. You're a bathroom remodeler, you know, you have , um, you're a painter, you have a gallery, you've got all kinds of different paintings. You've got , I just, there's a SM boy , the things that you could offer people, and you never know what's gonna suit them, right. Unless you ask them proper questions.

We , we mentioned last , uh , episode, that radio station, w I, I F M what's in it for me. So these questions allow you to find out what is in it for that person. What do they want? How do they want it? What are the particulars? It shows them, you respect their time and money and effort because you're asking them questions. You're a baker and you've got cupboards worth of ingredients. And you're trying to put these ingredients together for people. And that's really what it's all about.

So there's a , there's a lot of different things that you should probably try to harness with your businesses on what are the questions I should be asking now, I'm gonna give you a great , um , suggestion here that , um , it , it, isn't mine. It's something that was taught to me and I've used it. And it's wonderful. And I'm gonna share it with you. But so as you go down this path , uh , my suggestion is you find a place where you can reflect and do some good thinking. Uh , I love to get away.

I go to a cabin when I do that. And I I've told you before I use Windridge solitude here in the Ozarks, and it's a wonderful place to just turn off everything. And you really get to, you know, immerse yourself in thinking about, you know, what are the questions that my customers most commonly ask me? And it's a great, great way to just, you know, let them bubble up to your mind, write 'em down on paper. And then you've got this cache , you know, this cash of questions, if you will.

And what I suggest , uh , from what I was taught early on in my career is you take all those questions and you really answer them for the customer in the form of expectations. So you kind of go back to the expectations chapter in our book. And if you don't know, that's a , a picture of our book up there. We wrote a book , uh , last October, and it's got 255 business tools it's arranged in eight different chapters. And one of the chapters is expectations.

So what you do is you take questions that your customers most commonly ask, and you put 'em in the form of, in this case, I put this in my book, it's on page 36 and 37. I pretended that I was a deck builder, and I put all the questions that customers would probably have if they were looking for a deck to be built. And then I walk around, I would walk around with them. I would hand them out. I would take 'em to me with me in meetings.

And I would laminate those questions, but they're , but they're questions that are commonly , um, you know, contemplated by customers. Hey , um , how do you handle phone calls? How do you handle text messages? How many hours a day do you spend here?

Do you clean up or do we clean up, you know , um , all kinds of things that , that, you know, kind of a punch list that a customer would have for you, you can now put 'em those answers to the commonly asked questions in this format, and you've done your potential customer, a great deal of service. And of course, then you've gotta live up to those questions.

And , and it's really just a really cool way of going someplace, quiet, reflecting, figuring out what all those questions are that your customers have putting them down and creating a document that you can pass that , and you can laminate and use in presentations. Now, the three most important questions I, I like to ask and it , it's not, it doesn't fit every business , uh , model, but is what do you currently like about the service you're getting? What don't you like?

And if you could change your service, what would you change? And of course, that's, if you are doing some type of repeat business or service, building a deck or building doing remodeling a bathroom, it's hard to ask those questions, but you definitely want to ask people what they want out of that bathroom remodeling or out of that deck building experience, or out of that , uh , home re repair experience or home remodeling experience, because they'll tell you what they want.

But if you, again, going back to last podcast, if you really listen to what they're saying, they're telling you why they want it. And if they're not telling you why they want it try to find out, because that's really the essence. It's, it's, you know, it's the , it's the dominant, bind motive. We used to call it it to find out that, that question of why do you want all that? And let the people tell you, and it's , it's magical when you get it.

Now, if you're with talkers, we used to have to , um , go into an office in New York city. When I first started in sales and we , we had to grid, a person had about eight, 10 seconds to do it. You had to figure out if it was a feeler or talker, doer, a thinker, and then you had to adjust your presentation based on that type of person. It's a little bit difficult to do. It's quick, you know, you gotta , you just have to be trained on it, and if you're not trained on it, it can be tough.

But here is the advice I'll give you out of that. Uh, if you're with a feeler or talker and you ask an open-ended question and you get a long windy answer and it's taken up a lot of time, you have to switch to close ended questions. Yes. Or no type questions. If you're with a doer or thinker, and they kind of, you know , don't offer you much, they don't, you know, share. And they don't really engage that.

Well, then you've gotta try to pry , uh , answers out of them and get them, develop their answers a little more. And that's where you ask 'em an open ended question to, to discover more about what they're looking to do, but they're really , um, you know, they're really excellent tools. Um, open ended , close ended questions. Look, 'em up, learn a little bit about 'em maybe even do some role playing with some loved ones to kind of get comfortable with some of this.

But the bottom line is your customers have tons of questions. So many of your customers have tons of repeated questions, customer to customers. So every situation you encounter, you're kind of getting the same questions. You're getting the same. You're giving the same answers. Why not just head it off at the pass and do something like that. Again, page 36 and 37 in our book. If you buy the book on Amazon 1895 , you can get it on our website, simple biz , three sixty.com if you want.

Now what's the biggest question that I failed to ask in my life. Well, let me tell you something. It , uh, it's traveled with me all this time. It's 37 years into making it will travel with me the rest of my life. It affected 150 people at a gathering. And I can't believe that , uh, I didn't ask this question, but , uh , my wife and I, when we got married, got married in a , uh , was in the Chan station area of , um , New Jersey, beautiful little Dutch reform church.

We didn't, we didn't live in the area. We didn't go to the church, but we shopped churches and everything. So we found this great Dutch reform church went , you know, pastor was super nice and, you know, we invite 150 people to the wedding, right. And it's , uh , August 6th. So it's pretty hot, right. And sure enough, it's hot. And we go to the rehearsal and , uh, get in the , get into the church and say, Hey, pastor, man, this place is cooking. Baby, can you crank up the air?

And a pastor says , uh , I'm sorry, we don't have air condition here. We're like, are you kidding? No air guys. Well, to this day, my pictures of my wedding, I wore a dove gray tux . I have like a huge wet spot, my best man, huge wet spot guys in my wedding, huge wet spots. I mean, it was like 98 degrees out, 96% humidity. We melted the poor people in that church. Melted. We forgot to ask in March when we were shopping church . Hey, do you have air conditioning? No, we don't. Oh, deal breaker .

So any rate, just remember the importance of asking questions. Uh , I , you know, we look back on it and what can you do now? You have to laugh. But at the time it was kind of , uh , it was a little bit of a shocker that day before I get married. So any rate , uh , but the song I wanted to sing at my wedding and , uh, I'm glad I didn't cuz I would've butchered it. Um, but uh, I was , I did sing a little bit back then in churches and stuff at any rate .

Um , my wife , um, well I sang a couple years after that, but uh, I wanted to sing Joe Cockers you are so beautiful. And uh, you know what? My wife is a beautiful gift to God, to me, from God, to me. And I just love her so much. Thank you so much, Monica for sticking with me. I'm rascal. I know. And you know, I just appreciate , uh , you , you , um , you saying yes when I ask you to marry me and uh , this is the song you'll see lost in the shuffle track.

It's really not a lost in the shuffle track. It's Joe COER blew this baby up, but you are so beautiful from Joe COER in 1974. Hey, keep the shiny side up, hold onto your sand. It's your money. It's your profitability. And again, if we don't have smile customers, we got nada . Right? So make , keep making those customers happy. Thanks so much. And we'll see you next episode. Have a great week.