Mastering the Art of Asking: Transforming Your Business & Life

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:37Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs powered 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.

1:10And 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 and action coach called be 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 you. 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.

2:01So 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. So when I first got into business, I was pretty young when I first got into management. I was about 27 years old. They 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 said, cool, let's do it. Well, I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything about running an 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.

2:50Technically, 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. 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 50s, maybe even in his 60s, early 60s. 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 sales manager and 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 salesperson he was an expert he had been doing this for years he did very well and this was all commissioned sales so and he understood that in order to make the most money, you wanted to be 100 % commission.

4:02And all true salespeople really want to be 100 % commission because they know that they can make more money. Joe was one of those guys. 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 as customers. So Joe, the first thing I noticed was that Joe had a very good relationship with his customers.

4:47The second thing that I noticed though was Joe never started by doing a presentation about some new product we had or something. He always asked questions. He used questions to lead his clients to where he wanted to get them to. So he was curious. so the whole idea of asking questions to get somebody was it was sort of foreign to me at the time i i guess i knew it 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's and he used questions to figure out what was the problem that that they were trying to solve today so that he could get them a solution, whether we could supply it or somebody else.

5:46He 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. Sometimes in a sales situation, it's about what you're selling next, not necessarily what you're selling today and getting paid for.

6:43So 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 scripts and those kind of things are helpful because they will always lead you to ask for the sale. 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.

7:35Just 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 and one mouth. Use them in that proportion. So when you're asking, you want to 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. Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. Here's four things you can do.

8:24First, you can listen every week on Biz Radio Mondays at 1. 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 giftfrombuild.com. It's your roadmap to building your Epic business. That's giftfrombuild.com. Until next time, all the best. Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast. Here's three things that you can do.

9:03Number one, remember to subscribe to the podcast. It takes very little effort on your part. It's gonna help you and your fellow entrepreneurs. Plus, you guys know how it works. The more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly. Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read.

9:52No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.