The Power of Answers: How Influence Drives Success From Dr. Brian Glibkowski

0:28If you're in sales, this is massive. So Brian, I have to ask, with all the studies you've done, what is your definition of success? Like how do you define success? Making oneself whole. So I think success is a transformation of failure into success. What then is your formula for success? And it really comes down to three steps for me. You know, the first is self-reflection. And for me, it was putting it into an academic paper, putting into a book, you know, being aware of what the issue was. And step two for me was involving others, you know, getting partners around the world that had similar interests to me.

1:06And, you know, even this podcast was part of this process, right? Involving others, involving you. And third, to me, is really about transformation. It's about, you know, when you have your compass of where you're going, you involve the right people and then some magical things happen. You started the whole answer intelligence stuff by looking at the six WH or the five and the how type thing. How did that become research and teach us what actually came out of that? So before I did research on answers, I did research on questions. Going back to grade school, we learn about the six WH questions.

1:43Why, what, how, when, where, who. We learn about open and closed questions. One thing hit me that we do not know as much about answers. I really wanted to understand communication in a very basic form. Questions and answers and how I could navigate those conversations. And then through the research, how others could navigate conversations effectively. What's the big lesson out of that from those questions and answers? Because then you go into your six answer archetypes. Let's focus on that for a little bit. The big takeaway, I think, is looking at the function of questions and answers. The function of questions is curiosity.

2:19The function of answers is influence. And this is something I don't think people fully appreciate. We're used to sales approaches, ask great questions, but it's really the answers that give influence. For example, in sales, how do you close the deal? You answer the proverbial question that keeps the executive buyer up at night. It is the answers where the influence rests. So let's break down those six so people can help understand that. Yeah, let's start with what. And I'll give you an example in a different context. So you think of asking yourself a basic question, what is leadership? So you can answer that as a concept or metaphor.

2:55Imagine I'm in an interview and I explain that leadership leads to employee retention. because I know the company has retention issues. So that's a theory answer, cause and effect, or strategy, you might call it. And then I can give a story answer. And I won't give you a story. We all know what stories are. But now I lean in and I give my best story of how I lead people and how people have stayed with me. They love me, right? So I'm answering the why question. Extending further, let's go to the how question. Now it's up to me to explain how I lead. So I would need to explain a procedure, maybe three steps how I lead a meeting.

3:29The quality of your answers matter. So the quality of my story matters, but also knowing which answers map to which questions is something, you know, paramount and happens before you actually answer. Salespeople learning the formula, what's, I guess, the top two things they will get better at by understanding this? You know, I'll say two things. One is it's question recognition, which is part of the high IQ practices. and even though we think we know a lot about questions, we understand the questions by how they map to answers. So for example, I've done work with sales organizations and in AQ terms, executive buyers are asking why.

4:07Why should I work with you? Maybe they're being implicit. And what do the inexperienced sellers do? They're answering how questions with features and functions and they're losing. So first, question recognition. Which question is being asked? They may not use the word why, what, or how, but they're asking the why question. And so then be able to map it to the right answer. So that's step one. And that'll get you far. The second thing I recommend for someone in sales is think of your value proposition as an organization. And a simple exercise, can you communicate that value proposition in terms of six answers?

4:43And it's more challenging than you think. You may have a story, but can you transform that story into a metaphor? Yeah, the second point is, if you can challenge yourself individually as an organization to develop six answers, you're ready with the currency to respond when you're in those conversations. Working with improv comedians, tell me more about why prep work or how that works. We're talking about improv and how it relates to answer intelligence. And there's some parallels. So with improv, the way it works is there's preparation. So you do a mountain of preparation, you understand things.

5:17And there's principles that set on top of that preparation when you're live in the improv, principles like yes and. You always go forward. It's like an improv. Oh, we're in a ballroom. The other person doesn't say, no, we're not in a ballroom. We're in a dungeon. That doesn't work. You go with the flow. Now, how that relates to AQ is you can prepare ahead of time, understand questions and answers, understand six answers, say, for value proposition. But then you get into the actual conversation and the lesser of us are going to follow scripts. But But what AQ is, is an operating framework. And there's principles of how you navigate conversation.

5:54So that's similar to the yes and. And the principles are things like, you know, know the best answer for a given question or answer twice to appeal to the left and right side of the brain, logical and emotional. So those that are operating at the highest level of AQ are not using scripts. They are using it as an operating framework to navigate conversations and be sort of in the conversation in real time, dynamically adjusting and changing. Giving the answer before asking the question sort of thing or leading their answer by giving an answer before the question. Can you teach me a bit more about that?

6:29So what this gets at is sort of the subtle art of this. We're so used to questions coming first, then answers, but you can revert that. You can have an answer first in a sense. And for example, let's stick with sales since we talked about this. Imagine you start a sales meeting with a story as the seller. What does that do? It sets the context within which they ask subsequent questions. So you're narrowing the scope, right? And actually in point of fact, you're asking a question, perhaps to an, you're providing an answer to that story to an implicit question, or even a latent question, a question they should be asking, but they're not asking.

7:05So in the hands of like a masterful coach or communicator, you can provide an answer first and that's okay. And that's the Big Success Podcast for today. Hopefully you took a lot of notes, learned a whole bunch. And if you need to go re-listen to it, we dropped a lot of information right there today. Big success is what it's all about. And by the way, if you haven't subscribed, hit that subscribe button so you're here with us every single week on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugars. That's BS. Big success is what we're shooting for. Check the show notes for all the links. Make sure you follow through.

7:38Keep learning. Keep coming back. Oh, and by the way, share this with any of your friends who you know are up for success. I'll see you next week on the Big Success Podcast. You've been listening to the Big Success Podcast with the number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugars. To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit www.bradsugars.com. you