The 22 Dimensions of an Investor

My request to you for your best profiling questions was a homerun both for me and hopefully for you. I learned a tremendous amount about the subtlety with which people responded to my survey profile. I’ve received and evaluated over 500 questions with more arriving daily. And because you took the time to share your best with me, I can share the best of the best with you.

To put this in context, the capstone of “The Good Way to Sell” is profiling. I’ve always used them in my personal sales. I’ve taught profiling in countless seminars. I have written dozens of hundreds of profiles. But with your input, I intend to produce a questionnaire that will become a compliance-approved industry standard.

To evaluate the questions, I put them all in an Excel spreadsheet and then assigned a 1 to 5 rating to each. For each question, I also assigned a category. The big surprise for me was that I now have 180 questions I have rated a “5.” And I have discovered 22 question categories.

Basic Question about a QuestionnaireQuestion: How long should a questionnaire be?

Answer: Long enough to get a sufficiently detailed picture of the prospect in order to make recommendations that will solve their problems and take advantage of any opportunity.

This obviously means you need lots of questions, far more than you would need with any one client. Sometimes you will find what you need by simply asking, “Why are you here?” Sometimes it takes detailed, persistent digging to get enough information to prepare your solution for their problems and opportunities.

So don’t think for a second that a questionnaire cannot or should not be at least 100 questions, or even 180 questions. (180? Yep. As noted, that’s how many questions I have so far assigned to a top rating.)

By the way, the most amusing question was:

“Tell me about your grandchildren; tell me more about your grandchildren. Tell me even more about your grandchildren….by the way, here’s some paperwork for you to authorize.”