Questions: a most compelling marketing tool by John H. Melchinger Socrates refined several in a series that finally killed him, and the phrase Socratic Method was coined in his honor. Mae West broke ground in Hollywood with two grand ones that were each at least inviting if not outright compelling. Good trial lawyers manipulate them skillfully. Psychiatrists pose them to lead and to heal. Mothers work them to love, to teach and to control. Children make demands with them and learn by them. Lovers use them sometimes for reassurance, sometimes as weapons. We all use them to some advantage every day. What are they? Why, questions, of course. Do you use questions effectively in your marketing efforts? Too simple an answer for marketing? Not really. Almost every study and effort in marketing examines how to satisfy the customer by delivering - at a profit - satisfaction of the customer's wants and needs. The concept sounds simple, but its implementation becomes complex because so many variables confuse the marketing process. How does one go about uncovering or creating the need or desire; helping the customer understand and want to do something about it; offering an appropriate service or product to satisfy the customer; delivering the goods - even helping the customer to consume them - all at a profit. More complexity clutters the marketing tier where studies of profit margins, production costs and returns on investments can make or break an enterprise. The complexity of marketing grows and grows. More questions; more data; more confusion. Can the spiral ever really end? What is your marketing focus? What do you market? What do you sell? Do you offer the financial planning process in order to sell insurance and investments, or are you (and the customer) better off when you market and sell just the products? What about marketing yourself as an expert and collecting fees for your advice and selling no load products or no products at all? Will customers tolerate your collecting both fees and commissions? What's the real product, you or the contracts you sell? Can you effectively answer these questions for yourself? Do you know the right questions? Do you need to? Not necessarily. Can it be simpler and better? Simpler can be better. Instead of trying to answer all these questions about your own situation and hoping they are the right ones about marketing, you may be better off simply asking the right questions of your markets. Instead of standing on the proverbial soap box and blasting your messages above the din of the crowd, why not whisper the questions that compel your audiences to answer you and to remember you? There's power in questions; even the simplest ones. Remember these? Wherefore art thou, Romeo? Do you love me? How do I love you? Let me count the ways. Ehhhh, what's up, Doc? Why don't you come up and see me sometime? Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Who do you think you are? What is the sound of one hand clapping? If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? How am I doing? What would your family be doing today if you had died last night? What would you like them to be doing? Who pays your grocery bills when you're too sick or hurt to work? Writing a check for a million dollars wouldn't break the company, but it would bend it a lot more than you'd like, wouldn't it? Samples of questions I like Would you like to do something beautiful for your grandchildren with Uncle Sam subsidizing the bill? What price have you put on yourself? What have you insured your life for? Which do you prefer: to create your own liquid assets or to leave your hard assets to be liquidated? How long would it take you to pay into your account what you will someday get from insurance? Will your company fall apart if you fall apart? Who's first in line for your assets: your heirs, your creditors or the government? Would you rather build an asset with a before-tax or an after-tax dollar? Who owns your partner's share if your partner dies? Who will be your new partner? Is there a guaranteed market for your company? Do you know how not to pay your taxes out of principal? Would you rather spend a dollar or a dime? You could really come up short in retirement. Why end up with a self-inflicted wound? You've spent your working life fighting off government interference. Why give in to it in the end? Why not let the asset that creates your problem provide your solution? How would you like to dish up a great fringe benefit and not have to invite everyone to put the feedbag on? Would you buy money on which you pay the interest and someone else pays the principal? Good questions are often deceptively simple and convey more message than statements and offers. It can pay big dividends to keep things simple with well thought out questions, even in marketing something as esoteric and complex as the potential benefits of insurance and returns on investments. And simply put questions tend to evoke simply put answers you can work with. Example: What did you have for breakfast this morning? The refried upper part of a hog's hind leg with two oval bodies encased in a shell laid by a female bird, or ham and eggs? You've probably experienced the elegance of simplicity in some of your own selling, and maybe even marketing. Now, keeping things simple doesn't relieve you of ethical and legal requirements to provide ample information for your customers so they can make informed decisions, but it does help you attract people who want to know more, learn it from you, and then make their own decisions. So how do you draw people to you and what you have to offer? How do you show potential customers that you know something about them, what they want, and how best to get it? What is your best lure to get people to notice and develop enough interest to sit down and talk seriously with you about themselves? You ask the right questions. Two correlating principles 1. When you are in control you are in charge.We all know secretaries who run companies and iron-willed executives who control things regardless of who holds the title of leader for any particular function. These people are in charge of things because they are in control of things 2. The one who asks the questions is the one who has control.Did you ever watch a child ask a parent a question, get an answer, ask the next question, then repeat the process again and again and again until the parent takes back control by refusing to answer more questions? As long as someone keeps trying to answer, the one who asks the questions has control. It stands to reason then (and studies prove it to be true) that the dialogues begun when customers begin to answer questions that are important to them create the most meaningful relationships and the most sales. The seller leads by asking pertinent questions. Another rule of thumb about questions is that they can reduce relationship tension and increase task tension, which is good to do. Imagine receiving a letter explaining that the sender does estate planning with high net worth individuals. The need for estate planning and the process is outlined, and a "no obligation interview" is offered. The letter creates relationship tension in the reader by raising questions about the sender. Who is s/he? What's s/he really want? Do I really want to see this person? Is s/he good? On the other hand, questions that raise task issues in the reader's mind force the first focus to be on the reader, which can lead to positive assumptions that you - because you posed the questions - know something about how to get to the right answers. This is a good lead-in to a meaningful dialogue between prospects in your market and you. Let's try an example. The About to Retire Market People about to retire may think about a lot of different things, but when you know what their primary concerns are you can devise the right messages to deliver to this potentially lucrative market, as well as the right media to deliver those messages. Let's forget for a moment whether these pre-retirees are regular employees, professional employees (e.g., engineers who are not executives), executives or self employeds. Let's just consider people about to retire. What are they most concerned about? First, whether they will have enough money to last until they die rather than have their retirement funds expire before they do. Second, whether they can keep their health without wiping out their finances. Third, after all is said and done in their lives, whether they will have enough left over to give to their loved ones. Now that we know the market and their primary concerns, how do we devise the messages to deliver to the market? We can explain what we offer in each area of concern, such as placing a lump sum distribution of their retirement fund in investments with tax advantages that will give them more money longer; long-term disability insurance to provide for medical care above what their present insurance will cover; life insurance to guarantee the legacy they want to provide is passed to their heirs. These messages can be delivered in telephone calls, brochures, direct mail campaigns, workshops and seminars, bulletins, newsletters and most forms of advertising. These messages may appeal to the audience, but they probably will not start as many effective dialogues as properly formulated and delivered questions will. What do you think the impact of these three questions could be, properly delivered by the appropriate media to the target audience? Is your retirement income planned so that you will not outlive it? Are you assured that a medical calamity will not wipe out your assets? When you step out, will there be something left for your loved ones? Now, consider specific segments within the market and craft the questions in a manner that begins to show that you understand that more finite segment. Example: retiring high income employed (not self-employed) professionals who may also have high net worth. How will you handle the 80 percent excise tax on your IRA? Will your retirement cause the end of your company's long-term disability coverage to become the beginning of your own long-term care nightmare? When you go, will half or more of what you have accumulated go to the government in estate taxes? See what I mean? Properly posed questions will cause your audience to take notice, think about their situation and what they might want to do about it, and learn that the topics you are questioning comprise your areas of expertise. Innovate with questions To innovate means to offer something as, or as if, new. To innovate with questions, don't confine them to direct mail campaigns or initial interviews and fact-finding sessions. Like manure, good questions need to be spread around to make things grow. Left in one place they just stink. So put them in your flyers, newsletters, bulletins, brochures, workshops and seminars, letters to clients, on your business cards and envelopes. Make them headlines or subtitles in your writings. If you use your laser printer to print addresses on your envelopes, why not also print a message (a question) on the envelope as well, and change the message once in a while? It's easy, once you know how. When people start telling you that you are asking the right questions, posing the tough questions, making them think, then your message is getting across. John H. Melchinger coaches financial planning and estate planning professionals who market and sell to high income and high net worth buyers. His consultations on developing their professional practices through effective marketing are highly profitable for his clients. John's career experiences in financial services and products--since 1977--make him exceptionally qualified to have developed innovative, non-traditional marketing and skills development programs in estate planning, financial planning, business planning, ethics and consultative selling. His how-to books, articles, bulletins, workshops and presentations have become classics in the industry, and his clients are among the most profitable and productive in their fields. John is available on the Internet at jhmco@ix.netcom.com, by telephone appointment at (403) 459-1472, by fax at (403) 419-2936, and by mail John Melchinger 3 - 11 Bellerose Drive, Suite 117 St. Albert, AB T8N 5C9 Canada Web Site http://fsc.fsonline.com/fsm/jhmco.html