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There's an English idiom that goes, "The devil is in the details." I'm sure you've all heard it. It implies that the small things in plans or schemes are often the things that take the most time in the long term. Well, in criteria elicitation, we need to dig a little deeper than just the surface act and get a little dirty with the details. I believe that the elicitation of criteria is at the cornerstone of all sales. When we do this, to use a sports metaphor, it's like getting the ball down the alley each time with no gutter balls. Further defining their criteria gives us a strike each and every time. This is how definitions work. In my career I've done a lot of trainings and students come to see me for a myriad of reasons. For example, two people come into a training. Both of them, when you ask them their criteria, say that what's being taught in the training is important. If you ask them, "Is this important to you? Do you really want to learn this?" Both of them will say yes. Yet each one has different deeper definitions for their criteria when we elicit it. The first student might say that the training is important because they want to learn new skills and grow in their business. Your follow up is to ask what that means. They might say that they want to see a list of skills and they want to participate in exercises using the skills so they can learn them. The second person when you ask them what's important about what's being taught in the training, they say, it's to be recognized. That's a completely different criteria. When you ask what that means, they might say, they want to have the class participants recognize their skill and they want to be recognized by the instructor as skilled. These two students are both willing to come to the training, both willing to pay for the training, but if you think about it, despite the similarities in their criteria, they've got wildly different definitions of what a successful training looks like for them. If you've ever taught in front of a group, you'll know what I'm talking about. In any group you're teaching, there will be a section of people that probably know your material and maybe reasonably well, or at least think they do. There will be a group of people that are thinking, wow, I'm really in the presence of a master who I've studied for years. Then there will be the majority of the people that are interested in really wanting to gain knowledge and see if there is something of value to them in what you're saying. It is very important that you begin to understand that every time you think you know what someone wants, unless you ask the questions, you don't know what they want. You're not on target or on track and until you elicit both the criteria, the meaning, and the definition, you are missing the boat. Knowing criteria is a good start. If you want to bowl strike after strike, the key is to learn how to define their criteria.
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Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of affluent prospects using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion techniques.
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