Boaz Rauchwerger and The Five Questions
I have met quite a few interesting people over the last year since working as marketing director for a personal growth company. Many of these people are expert speakers ranging from referral experts to leadership gurus. I attended a Vistage meeting as a guest a few months ago and got a chance to listen to Boaz Rauchwerger present to a group of CEOs, many of whom run multimillion dollar companies. Needless to say I was lucky to be there.
5 Powerful Questions
Boaz spoke on the power of “The Five Questions”. After doing thousands of presentations to groups of CEO’s he mentioned that time and time again CEOs would attest to the power of these questions.
These are five simple questions that you can ask informally that can teach you so much about other people and make them feel important.
Start with a phrase that puts most people at ease: I’m just curious…
- Where are you from originally?
- (If not from here) What brought you here?(If from here) Have you lived here all your life?
- Do you have a family?
- What do you do?
- What did you want to be when you were growing up?
The power of these questions lies in the fact the most people like talking about their roots and their history. Once you get someone started with easy questions, they’ll usually find it easy to keep talking. This way you can refer to some of the information in a future conversation with that person. The power of using this technique with your clients could be huge!
By taking an interest in your client they will know that you care about them and if you can refer back to this information during your next interaction they will be blown away. Imagine asking for referrals from a client after you using this technique. You would have a client for life and a referral machine!
It’s very easy to forget to use this technique so Boaz recommended creating a business card with your company logo on one side and the questions on the other side. Pass these out when networking to assist in your marketing.
Give these questions a shot and see what happens.
To your success,
Kelly Marsh
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