Epic Entrepreneurs

Mastering the Art of Asking: Transforming Your Business & Life

• Bill Gilliland

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Do you want to do more with your life and business? If so, start by becoming different! I share some powerful insights from my time working with Joe, a successful salesperson who mastered the art of asking. We will unpack the different types of questioning, including asking for information, for help, for what's next, and for directions. Most importantly, we delve into the importance of asking for the sale and for referrals. Remember the golden rule, “ask and you shall receive”. 

As we move forward, get ready to turn your business endeavors into epic ventures. We've got a treasure trove of actionable steps that I personally recommend to fellow entrepreneurs. Tune in every week to the Epic Entrepreneurs on Biz Radio, subscribe to our podcast, and don't hesitate to give us a five-star rating. Finally, be sure to get a free copy of my book, The Coach Approach Five Principles to Build an Epic Business. Each of these steps could be the game-changer you've been looking for in your journey towards epic success.

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Bill:

Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs Foward by Action Coach Growth Partners. You likely went into business to have more freedom and flexibility so that you could spend more time with your family, do more things or travel or enjoy your hobbies or whatever it is that you like to do in your spare time. We're here to help you find better ways to make more money, build better teams and get that time back so that you can have that freedom and flexibility. We'll help you simplify things and make sense of business, investing and wealth building, so that you can be epic and achieve all your dreams and goals. And now enjoy the show. Hi there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs, and this week I'm going to be talking about being. We have a formula in Action Coach called B times do equals have. In other words, what you have is the product of the things you do and the person you become. So here's an interesting thing you can only do so much, so at some level, the doing runs out. You run out of view. In order to do something more, you have to do something different, which means you have to become something different. So I came up with this idea of running through the alphabet with the theme always be. So. I think it's going to be fun, it's going to be cool, you're going to enjoy it, and the first one is always be asking, always be asking.

Bill:

So when I first got into business, I was pretty young. When I first got into management, I was about 27 years old. They had fired a guy who was running the place. I had been there in another position as a marketing manager and said hey, bill, we want you to run this industrial distributor. I say cool, let's do it. Well, I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything about running the industrial distributor. I didn't know how to run people. I was pretty young, and so I learned a lot from the people who worked for me. Technically, they worked for me or with me, but I learned a lot about business and about sales and about how to conduct myself as a person and a manager from some of these people who've been around.

Bill:

One of the guys that I worked with was a guy named Joe, and I was young, I was 27. Joe was not young. Joe was probably in his late fifties, maybe even in his sixties, early sixties. In fact. He had a son who was only a couple of years younger than me working in the business, and so I used to ride with the sales guys. I was technically the general manager, or sales manager, so I used to ride with the sales guys, and he had been around a long time, and so, when I was riding with Joe, he was, by the way, the consummate sales person. He was an expert. He had been doing this for years. He did very well, and this was all commissioned sales, so he understood that, in order to make the most money, you wanted to be 100% commission, and all true sales people really want to be 100% commission, because they know that they can make more money. Joe was one of those guys.

Bill:

Joe was a great guy, though, and a great teacher, and one of the things I noticed right off the bat is after we would go in and say, hi, he was, first of all, he knew all his customers. He was on a very tight relationship basis with his customers. They liked him, he liked them, they trusted him. He had built up the know, like and trust that you have to have his customers. So, joe, the first thing I noticed was that Joe had a very good relationship with his customers. The second thing that I noticed, though, was Joe never started by doing a presentation about some new product we had or something.

Bill:

He always asked questions. He used questions to lead his clients to where he wanted to get him to. So he was curious. So the whole idea of asking questions to get somebody was sort of foreign to me at the time. I guess I knew it.

Bill:

Sometimes I was inherently curious, but I just noticed it right away with Joe, because Joe was so good at asking questions and leading people down and leading them to the sale and he used questions to figure out what was the problem that they were trying to solve today, so that he could get them a solution. Whether we could supply it or somebody else, he was always looking for a way to provide a solution for our clients, our customers. So here's some rules that I have when you're always asking. Number one ask with a purpose. Joe asked with a purpose. He was looking to find out what he could provide to them, what he could sell to them that would help them and help him. Ask for information, dig deep, figure out all the angles, figure out everything that there is. You can ask for help. Joe didn't know all the answers. In fact, no one knows all the answers, but be willing to ask for help.

Bill:

Sometimes in a sale situation, it's about what you're selling next, not necessarily what you're selling today and getting paid for. So you may be selling the next meeting. So ask for the next meeting. Go ahead and set it up while you're there or while you're on the phone. Ask for what's next. Ask for directions If you don't know how to get somewhere. Ask for directions, hey, but you still need to ask for the sale. So by all means, ask for the sale. I think it's one of the things that we sometimes forget to do. It's unbelievable that we can do it. That's why Scripps and those kinds of things are helpful, because they will always lead you to ask for the sale.

Bill:

And remember to ask for referrals, because it's a lot easier to close a referral than it is to close somebody from being a cold prospect. Just remember that in ancient scripture there is something that says ask and you shall receive. So ask there's also. It didn't come from ancient scripture, not sure where it came from, but it says hey, you got two ears in one mouth. Use them in that proportion. So when you're asking, you wanna listen. So remember to ask and ask and ask, but remember to listen before you respond and solve their problem. I hope this has been helpful. Remember always be asking. Until next time, all the best.

Bill:

Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. Here's four things you can do. First, you can listen every week on Biz Radio, mondays at one Second. You can subscribe to the podcast. Hey, you get it. The more subscribers we have, the more cool things we can offer you. Three you can also go out and give us a five star rating everywhere. And number four if you'd like a free copy of my book, the Coach Approach Five Principles to Build an Epic Business, just go to giftfrombillcom. It's your roadmap to building your epic business. That's giftfrombillcom. Until next time, all the best.