Three Questions To Transform Your Business

Three Questions To Transform Your Business!
Allow me introduce you to some people who will know thousands of potential clients for your services – probably tens of thousands!

There are a group of people you already know who have the potential to pass volume business your way – I mean, how many clients does your Accountant have 500 or 5,000? And what about your Solicitor – another 1,000 or so? Ok, what about your Bank – 10,000 or 50,000?

Of these tens of thousands of local businesses, how many have a potential need for your services? How many of these ‘needy’ people are already spending money with you?

Speak with any group of businesspeople or salespeople and you will quickly learn that one of their most pressing problems is winning new, high quality clients/customers on a regular basis. Despite this, few of them have actually held a meeting with their Accountant, Solicitor or Bank Manager to specifically request leads from their extensive client/contact base.

People in business usually make the costly mistake of assuming that their Accountant, Solicitor and Bank Manager will automatically recommend them and their services to their masses of clients and contacts. This is just not the case! Accountants, Lawyers and Bank Managers are busy people and unless there is ‘some’ pressure on them to proactively pass leads to you – they won’t! If they do pass you leads, it is probably just a fraction of the business they COULD pass to you.

The bottom line is this: Most people make it far too easy for these ‘professional’ service providers to avoid proactively generating referrals for them!

What you need is a strategy that shifts the motivation, making it easier for them to PROVIDE you with referrals than NOT to – and here it is, in three simple questions! These three questions should be asked of your Accountant, Solicitor and Bank Manager, preferably face-to-face, in the exact order they are given.

Here they are:

Question 1: How many clients do you have?
Question 2: How many of them do you think use (whatever you offer)?
Question 3: How many leads do you think you can pass to me over the next 30 days then?

What these three questions do is extremely clever. Here’s the science behind each one:

Question 1: How many clients do you have?
This is what I refer to as a FOUNDATION question. It forms the foundation upon which the rest of the questions stack. People are proud of the size of their client base and are only too eager to show you just how hard they work and how successful their business/practice is.

Question 2: How many of your clients do you think use (your service/product)?
This is what I refer to as a FOCUS question. It causes the listener to focus on the profile of his or her client base and the nature of your product or service, before joining the two together. They know that you will have a very good idea of how many businesses, on average, have a requirement for your wares – so their answer has to be realistic.

Question 3: How many leads do you think you can pass to me over the next 30 days then?
This is what I refer to as a MOTIVATOR question. It causes the listener to review what they have just told you and then give you an answer, based on their two previous answers. It also sets up a timescale – and as the old saying goes; “what gets measured gets done!” At this point you have just shifted their motivation - making it far easier to pass you leads and far harder not to. Even if they fail to give you a definitive number, it is no longer easy for them NOT to provide you with regular introductions. Now that there is a timescale for when you will be expecting to have received some leads, the listener will find it far harder not to provide them.

The great thing is, you needn’t ask these questions in a particularly serious way! Even if you ask these questions with a wry smile on your face, (as I always do) there is more than enough ‘social pressure’ created to cause the listener to start proactively helping you with the development of your business.

This simple three question strategy has been used to generate millions of pounds (and dollars) worth of business for me, my clients, contacts and readers over the years. I hope you find it equally effective in your business. Let me know how you get on!