1B – Deliver Results the First Time – Andy Bounds
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Oct 16, 2012
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MUSIC / VISUALS OPEN
The great Peter Drucker once said… the most
serious mistakes are not a result of wrong
answers…they are a result of wrong
questions.
If Drucker is right…these are dangerous
times indeed...
With so much data and uncertainty weighing
on our decisions…asking the wrong
questions…to arrive at the wrong
destination…are mistakes we can’t afford to
make.
EN:01B:01
Andy Bounds
EN:01B:02
● Sales Trainer of the Year
EN:01B:03
● Best-selling Author
EN:01B:04
Deliver Results the First Time
Featuring
Andy Bounds
To help put us on the right course…here’s
Andy Bounds.
A communications expert…Andy Bounds
has been honored as Britain’s “Sales Trainer
of the Year.”
His book…The Jelly Effect: How to Make Your
Communication Stick…became a best-selling
business classic.
Listen as Andy Bounds explains how to deliver
results…the first time.
© MMXII Crestcom International, LLC
EN:01B:05
Andy Bounds
Ladies and gentlemen, I think it's fair to say
that of all the things that can annoy people in
business, having to needlessly do work again
is pretty much at the top of the list. We're so
busy we just do not have time sometimes to
do things once but twice and three times.
But the thing is people will ask you to do
work and when they ask you to do work they
think they're asking you to do what they
want. And you do exactly what they say and
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then it turns out it wasn't quite right.
And it's so easy to think it's their fault or they
think well it's your fault and actually it's
nobody's fault, it's just that communication
hasn't worked.
But if we can get this right, if we can make
sure that we never ever do things twice when
they could have just been done once, what a
huge saving that will be.
And it's not just a saving in time it's the
energy and the motivation that we can release
by making sure things go as we want.
In addition to management training very
often I get called in by organizations to help
improve their sales. The first time I noticed
this was really important was when an
organization rung me up and said, Andy,
we'd like you to help our people with their
cold calling.
We've got about 200 people. We'd like to pile
them in a room and we'd like you to improve
their cold calling ability. So it's really clear
what they want. 200 people in a room
teaching them how to do cold calling.
So it would have been great for me to say
certainly. But actually I said to them this.
Well thanks very much for that. Do you mind
if I ask a couple of questions to make sure
that we achieve exactly what you want from
this work? Is that okay?
Now what could the other person say? They
said, "Well what do you want to know?" And
I said, "How do you know that you need this?
What's wrong?" And they said, "They're not
very good at cold calling."
I said, "Yeah but how do you know?" And
they said, "Because they always take a long
time to pick up the phone, they don't seem to
want to do it and when they do it, it doesn't
seem to work."
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And I understand that. I mean I don't know
about you but I personally don't particularly
enjoy cold calling. If I have 3 things to do in
a day, one of them is clean the toilets, one of
them is to wash underneath the oven and the
other one is to do cold calling, I'd probably
do them in that order, you know.
Audience: Laughter
And if I run out of time to cold call because
of the oven, never mind. It just happened. So
I hate cold calling. A lot of people love it. I'm
not demeaning it as a profession but it's not
for me. So I said to them, "So what's the
problem with the cold calling?"
They said, "Well they don't pick up the
phone and they don't get the results that they
want." I said, "What results do you want?"
They said, "Well I want someone to say
yeah, that's great. Let's have a meeting."
I said, "So you're not getting the meetings
you want, is that right?" And he goes, "That
is right actually because what happens is our
business is great at closing sales. Every time
we're in front of a customer they tend to buy.
The problem is we just can't get in front of
enough of them and I look at my salespeople
and their diaries are pretty much empty."
So I said, "So listening to this is it fair to say
that if our work together made your people's
diaries full, would that be a good outcome
then?" They said, "That's exactly what I
want."
And I said, "If we could do that without
anybody having to make a cold call would
that alright?" And he said, "Oh yes, we all
hate cold calling."
So he'd identified what he thought was the
problem and he said I want you to do X but
he didn't want X, he wanted the outcome
from X. He didn't want cold calling, he
wanted full diaries.
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EN:01B:06
"Afters"
And if you think of this, this is what I call
"afters." I've talked about afters in many
different guises. But what I mean by afters is
what people are left with afterwards. Nobody
wants to be good at cold calling but
afterwards they want appointments in their
diary.
Nobody I've ever heard in my life wants to
hear about the company's corporate
presentation but they're very happy to know
how the company can help them after they've
heard it.
It's the same with any walk of life. I mean let
me ask you a question. Some of you will
have bought a newspaper before now and I
imagine when you bought the newspaper you
were absolutely convinced that you wanted a
newspaper. I don't think you did.
Based on afters, you don't want a newspaper.
Why do you buy a newspaper? What do you
really want? You want the news or the sports
or the gossip or something to do on the train,
whatever it is that's important to you.
Nobody ever has bought a newspaper
because they want one.
Similarly, nobody has ever bought toothpaste
because they want toothpaste. What do you
want? You want clean teeth or to smell
beautiful on Friday nights, whatever it is.
Audience: Laughter
EN:01B:07 People want the "afters"
So nobody wants the thing. They always
want the afters of the thing. Nobody ever has
wanted a cold calling course. Ever.
And similarly, none of you here and this is
quite upsetting for me, are truly interested in
what I'm talking about. You're much more
interested in what you can do with it after
I've stopped talking.
Does this make sense? So if you don't want
the newspaper and you want the news and
you don't want toothpaste, you want clean
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teeth and you don't want cold calling, you
want full diaries and you don't want this
session, you want the benefits this session
brings you. Well think about it.
If somebody says please can you do me a
report on topic X? They don't want a report
on topic X. They want what that report will
give them, the afters of it.
Now just as I could have easily delivered that
cold calling seminar it wouldn't have been
what the customer wanted, it wouldn't have
achieved the results they wanted. I would
have got paid but they wouldn't have got the
value they wanted.
Similarly, if somebody asks you to do a
report on topic X, if you do the report it's
what they asked for. You did what they
asked for, not what they wanted.
EN:01B:08 To Get Things Right the First Time:
So how to get things right first time is
EN:01B:09 To Get Things Right the First Time:
never to do the thing that's been asked.
● Don't provide the "thing"
EN:01B:10 To Get Things Right the First Time:
● Don't provide the "thing"
● Provide the "afters"
it's to provide the afters of the thing that's
been asked.
EN:01B:11 ● Past Tense
Now if you think about afters, there are three
tenses in the world. There's the past tense,
things that have already happened,
EN:01B:12 ● Past Tense
we have the present tense, today,
● Present Tense
EN:01B:13 ● Past Tense
● Present Tense
● Future Tense
and we have the future tense. Of those three,
where do afters happen? Well they happen in
the future because they haven't happened yet.
So the best questions to ask to find what
somebody truly wants is a future based
question.
So if I'm asked to speak at a conference and
they say what will you talk about, my answer
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is always the same. I have no idea.
And they say, "What do you mean by that?"
And I say, "Well it depends. What do you
want your audience to do differently after
I've spoken?" "We want them to be better at
XYZ." "Okay, well I'll talk about this then.
Okay?"
EN:01B:14 To Deliver Results the First Time:
So the first step to being great at giving
people what they want the first time is to
make sure that we can
EN:01B:15 To Deliver Results the First Time:
1. Ask future based questions
ask good future based questions.
I'm going to give you two or three future
based questions to start you off and then
afterwards because this is just my personality
speaking when I tell you my questions.
Afterwards why don't you guys just work
together to see if you can come up with a list
which sounds more like your personality
speaking rather than mine.
If somebody says something to you like
please can you produce a report on this, a
future based question might be something
like, sure, of course I can.
EN:01B:16
"What are you looking to achieve?"
Just so I'm clear, what is it you're looking to
achieve with this report? Now the word
"what are you looking to achieve," can you
hear that's in the future?
So we're not talking about what should go in
the report, yeah? We're saying what should
happen after the report.
EN:01B:17
"What are your goals?"
So one is, what are you looking to achieve?
Another one might be, what are your goals
with this?
EN:01B:18
"What keeps you awake at night?"
Some of you might have heard some of the
questions that fly around the business
community. What keeps you awake at night
that you'd like to remove? Now I always
think that sounds a little bit ... strange that
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question.
But I shared that question with a guy recently
and he was talking to one of his customers
and this guy worked for a bank and he said to
his customer so what keeps you awake at
night.
And his customer said health. And he said
what do you mean by that and he said well
I've ... there's been a terrible situation. One of
my friends has become very poorly and they
don't have adequate cover and it's been real
problems for their family so I'm just
suddenly realizing how mortal I am.
And so my friend said to him, "So would it
help if I could give you some protection on
that so you didn't need to worry about it?" He
goes, "Oh yes. Yeah." Notice he didn't say
please can you give me critical illness cover.
He said I'm just concerned about this.
So what keeps you awake at night if that
suits your personality, that's a great one to
use.
One which I quite like using as well is, if you
could give your colleagues just one or two or
three things what would they be? What
would you love your people to have that they
don't have now?
And all these future based questions, what do
you want people to feel after they've read the
report.
As long as you start focusing on the future of
the communication not the communication,
the communication more or less writes itself.
I asked a group of people a while ago to
come up with some future based questions
and just as I will do with you, gave them 2
minutes. I said come up with as many as you
can. Try and get to 10 in 2 minutes.
That's quite a challenge but sometimes
people will say and what would success look
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like, and how will you know it arrived, and
what of the performance and they're just very
good at it.
So I asked this group of people to come up
with 10 in 2 minutes and after about 4
seconds one person stops and says I've done
it.
Well how did you get 10 in 4 seconds? I
teach this. I couldn't get 10 in 4 seconds.
How have you done this?
Audience: Laughter
And he goes, "Where would you like to be in
1 year? Where would you like to be in 2
years? Where would you like to be in 3
years?" Well that's just cheating.
So ladies and gentlemen, have a quick
conversation. If somebody asked you to do
something what sort of questions could you
ask other than what are you looking to
achieve?
EN:01B:19
Participant Exercise
Additional resources available at:
www.CrestcomLeadership.com
So, ladies and gentlemen, let's bring this back
to the front. Did you find you could think of
some questions? Yeah? It's not too hard to
think of them actually.
The hard thing is to realize you're supposed
to ask them. You know. Because if you speak
at conferences for a living and somebody
says what are you going to talk about, it's a
really easy answer to say A, B and C because
that's the question that's been asked.
And if somebody says could you help my
people be better at cold calling, it's so easy to
say yes or no.
And if somebody says I'm not really happy
with the performance review system we have
in our organization, please could you do a
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report on how we might improve it, it's so
easy to say yes of course.
So coming up with the questions is not the
challenge. It's realizing that the
communication is not the key thing, it's the
afters of the communication that matters.
Now imagine that you asked a question and
you say, "So what are you looking to achieve
from this?" And the person you're speaking
to says something like, "I just want to enjoy
my job more."
It will be a mistake to go, "Great, I'll just go
and write your report then," because you
haven't got enough information. And don't
forget when people ask you to do a report,
they thought they wanted a report so the
answer they give them will probably be very
similar to the report.
We need to break this and we need to get
them in the future.
EN:01B:20 To Deliver Results the First Time:
So what should always happen is when
somebody says their answer to your first
question,
EN:01B:21 To Deliver Results the First Time:
2. Dig deeper with a second question
delve more deeply by asking some good
quality what I call second questions. So you
ask the next natural question.
And there's various ways that you can do this
but one of them is to think of the question
words – when, who, what, where.
So if somebody says, "I'm looking to enjoy
my job more," I might say, "Oh really. Why
do you say that?" "Well I'm just not enjoying
it very much." "And when did this start? Is
this a recent thing? And what do you think is
causing it? So how do you think this report
can help you enjoy it more?"
Can you see the more second questions I ask,
the better it is. If you remember the example
I did with cold calling it wasn't as simple as,
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can you do something on cold calling? Why?
What do you want to achieve? Full diaries.
You know it doesn't go straight there so you
have to help him.
Instead of using the question words like why,
who, where, when, a great little phrase to use
is "tell me more" or "go on." So if somebody
says I'm just looking to get much closer to
our middle managers here. You might say oh
really. Tell me more. Or oh yeah, go on.
So let's say you do this and the other person
starts giving you the information that you
want. This puts you in a really useful place
because both of you are focusing on exactly
what the other person wants which is the
future, which is the afters.
But there's a strange thing. Very often the
first words out of somebody's mouth aren't
really what they think so we need to dig a bit
deeper.
There's a saying that people don't buy or buy
into what they need, they buy into what they
want. So if you imagine somebody was just
to walk in here now selling wigs, well I
clearly need one. Because hair and I, we just
don't really get along.
Audience: Laughter
So if somebody was to say to me, "Would
you like this wig?" I would probably say,
"No, it's okay, thank you, even though I need
it."
EN:01B:22
People tend to be motivated by
"wants"
So people tend to be motivated first up by
what they want, not what they need.
EN:01B:23
Good questions reveal "needs"
So we have to ask good questions to find out
what they really need.
So let's say you're speaking to someone and
you've done all the work and you've asked
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the second questions and you've found out
what the main thing is, it's a very powerful
thing to say after that, "Okay, I've got that.
So you want to improve the performance
management system within our
organization." Listen to these two words.
EN:01B:24 To Deliver Results the First Time:
3. Ask "anything else?"
"Anything else?" And do you know what
happens when you say anything else? People
normally tell you something else.
And if they say, "Yes, I could actually do
with breaking up this bottleneck in the
production department," and then you're off
on your second questions again. "Bottleneck?
Tell me more. When did this start? Why's it a
problem?" And so on.
One way to do second questions, you do
have to be careful not to be caught out doing
this, is to repeat the last few words that
someone says so if they say, "I'm worried
about the bottleneck in the manufacturing
departments." You might say, "The
bottleneck in the manufacturing
department?"
"Yeah it's been there for a couple of weeks."
"A couple of weeks?" "Oh yes, it's amazing I
don't know how it started. I think it was
because of Allen." "It was because of Allen?"
"Yes, it was"... So as long as you don't get
caught doing it. But you might just want to
say, "Tell me more."
EN:01B:25 To Deliver Results the First Time:
1. Ask future based questions
Finally, when you've asked the questions so
what are the phases. Number one, you ask
future based questions.
EN:01B:26 To Deliver Results the First Time:
1. Ask future based questions
2. Dig deeper with a second question
Number two, you delve, you dig deep with
the second question.
EN:01B:27 To Deliver Results the First Time:
1. Ask future based questions
2. Dig deeper with a second question
3. Ask "anything else?"
And thirdly you say anything else to make
sure points come in.
Now before I tell you the fourth and final
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step, one more thing about asking questions.
Firstly, when you ask a question and the
other person is answering and you think it's
your turn to interrupt them, always remember
to wait,
W-A-I-T and WAIT stands for Why Am I
Talking? You know you want the other
person to tell you things so let them speak.
The other thing about asking questions is
this. If you imagine drilling for gold
underground and you had one of two tools
that you could use, you could either use a
spade, back breaking to get the gold, or you
could use a drill.
Now people would normally say well go
with the drill because it's easier. But if you
think the way that gold is underground, it's in
seams and if you use a drill what will happen
is you'll hit a seam of gold but you'll keep on
going past it so you'll get to the gold quickly
but then you'll only get a bit of gold and
you'll drill past.
If you've got a spade, it takes a bit longer to
reach the bit of gold but what would you then
do when you found it? You'd follow the gold.
And that's what I think second questions are.
If you say, "What are you looking to
achieve?" "I want to enjoy my job more."
That's a piece of gold. Get your spade out
and follow the gold.
And finally, when you've done all this
questioning, you then ask them the most
important question of all which is, "Of
everything you've shared with me now,
EN:01B:28 To Deliver Results the First Time:
4. Ask "what's your number one
priority?"
what's your number one priority here?"
Of everything you've just told me now, what
is your number 1 priority here? We're no
longer talking about cold calling, we're
talking about full diaries, we're talking about
motivated people, we're talking about a sense
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of energy in the workforce, we're talking
about beating the competition.
And when you say so what's the most
important thing here and they say to be
honest, full diaries. And you say great and
what's the second most important. Beating
the competition. And the third most
important. And when you have this, you have
this wonderful list of the first, the second, the
third most important after to the other person.
When you know this, do you think your
communication to them will be better or
worse?
Audience: "Better" – "Yeah a lot"
Better by quite a lot? Yeah, by quite a lot. By
an awful lot. And do you know how you
make sure the communication is exactly what
they want? You repeat back to them what
they've just said.
So my understanding is you want me to
create a communication which is going to
achieve this first, this second this third. Is
that right? They will hopefully say yes.
And then you say there's a couple of ways we
could do this. If you want I could do it in the
report that you mentioned before. The reports
tend to be quite long so it'll be thorough but it
might be quite long.
Another way we could maybe do it is when
I've got some ideas, I could give you a call
and we could talk about it and then maybe I
could produce a shorter report for you.
Which would you prefer?
And do you know one of the great things
about asking that, you are minimizing the
chance to almost zero of not giving
somebody exactly what they want because
you asked the right questions to find out what
was important and then you said and how
would you like this information presented to
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you.
Now if I was to say to you let's grade
ourselves between 1 and 10, 1 we're not very
good, 10 we're very good. If you think about
this, on a scale of 1 to 10 do you understand
this or not, in other words one, I don't
understand what you said, Andy, or 10, it
makes sense. Make sense? Have you got like
10? Yeah, so it makes sense.
The next question is this. On a scale of 1-10
one, I don't really think it's very important,
10, yes, I can see this would save quite a lot
of time here. Where are we?
Audience: 10
So what I've heard from you is this. Number
one, that you can do it and number two, that
it's important.
Now the final grading out to 10 if I was to
ask you how good are you at this, I would
imagine we wouldn't be getting 10s. People
would say I'm not a 10 yet.
And to those people who think they're not a
10 at this yet, what's the only way you can
get good at this?
Practice. Do it. Practice and do it.
My favorite quote about practicing was
delivered by Fritz Kreisler who's a famous
violinist and someone came up to him after
he'd delivered a recital and said, "Fritz, I
loved that. I would give my whole life to
play as beautifully as you just did."
And he said, "I did. I did give my whole life
to playing this beautifully."
So if you want to be great at asking
questions, you have to practice. We might
never be as good at asking questions as Fritz
Kreisler is at the violin but in my world if we
just did this once or twice a week the
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difference we could make would be huge.
And going the other way as well, when you
ask somebody to do something for you and
let's face it, as a manager, how often do we
have to delegate tasks?
Be very careful you don't just delegate the
task but talk about the afters of the task.
So don't say things like I'd like a report about
supplier X. You would say I want to make
sure we're getting the best return we can from
supplier X so I need to find a couple of bits
of information out to make sure that we're
doing everything we can. Therefore please
can I ask you to do a quick report which
summarizes XYZ.
So this works both ways. It's not just when
you're receiving requests from somebody
else, it's when you're giving requests to
somebody else.
And do you know the wonderful thing if you
do this, ladies and gentlemen, nothing is
perfect but there's a great chance that this
will make a big, big difference to getting rid
of one of the most frustrating things we said
which is where you needlessly have to do
work twice.
Because if you ask these future based
questions and work up from there, we really
should be delivering what people want the
first time.
EN:01B:29
Additional resources available at
www.CrestcomLeadership.com
© MMXII Crestcom International, LLC
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