Someone says, “I want to earn more money.” If you’re some sort of business consultant, coach branding designer, what have you, until we have follow-up information, we don’t yet know what that means, which is a side note for future content here on this process in this series. It’s the power of ambiguous words. I’ll make it a point to very rarely say things like book more clients because if you’re in a coaching consulting or some sort of service-based business, chances are, you might not want more clients. Here’s someone I worked with recently for their business. And he used to be the handyman and now he’s the full surface contractor. Well, he doesn’t want to be going to a different house every single day these days. No. He wants to be selling this big five or even six-figure renovation, which has them now in one property. And as he put it, “My ideal calendar,” he goes, “Ten customers a year.” You know your business can change people’s lives but you don’t yet have the right

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words to inspire them to take action. Imagine the changes you will create in your business as you tap into the secrets of ethical influence and positive persuasion to not only better serve your clients, but also to supercharge your financial freedom. I’m your host, Jason Linett, and welcome to the Hypnotic Language Hacks podcast. I help entrepreneurs and business owners just like you to close more premium sales. And no, this isn’t about tricking or manipulating people. Not at all. It’s about helping your prospects to appropriately sell themselves into your products or services. Please hit Subscribe and get all the episodes now at jasonlinett.com. Sometimes the most influential communication that you can make use of in your business is not necessarily the result of having a few snappy comebacks. It’s not the result of having a few really clever objection crushers or whatever kind

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of memorized patter or scripts you may have been sold in the past. No. Instead, it really comes down to that skill to listen to your client, to listen to that prospect, because remember this little fact, you have two ears and one mouth and so often our communication should be proportionate to that. So today’s episode is all about persuasive questions for business influence. It’s where some of the greatest success that I’ve seen in my business and the stories of my students over the years and what they’ve achieved, it’s the direct result of simply, again, asking the right questions at the right time. And, again, remembering the fact that two ears, one mouth as that person is speaking to you, you really ought to be listening, which I really shouldn’t have to say that here. But have you found yourself in that situation where maybe you didn’t remember someone’s name? Well, chances were you weren’t actually listening when they told it to you. Listen with intent, listen with compassion, listen with care because the

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truth is there’s so much value packed into the words that people share with you. And today’s episode is all about getting the right questions at the right time to help you to elicit from your prospect how their buying decisions are made, where they are, perhaps, in your sales process, asking the right questions at the right time so you’re better prepared to now deliver the right words, the right statements at the right time so they’re ready to sign up for your program, your services at an appropriate premium rate. Now, two extra things for today’s episode. First of all, be sure you listen all the way through the end of this episode because I have to warn you in advance. What I’m about to share with you has one potentially dangerous side effect. There’s a little bit of a known risk inside of the content I’m about to share with you. Now, my goal is always to help you to use your influence powers for good. So be sure you please listen all the way through to the end of this episode because

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if you miss that little segment about the potential side effect of these strategies I’m about to share with you, some dangerous things could occur. And, again, let’s make the world a better place, sales, and businesses noble, as long as you’re helping to solve someone’s problem. So be sure you listen all the way through because that’s vital information that you have to have the context of everything before I explain that, that’s why I’ll do that at the end. Second of all, my job is always to help you to get to wherever you want to go faster and easier, which is where if you head over to the show notes for this specific episode, jasonlinett.com/8. This is episode number eight, persuasive questions for business influence. Plug in that URL web address that’ll bring you directly over to the show notes because that’s where I’ll make a free download available. A free download my Hypnotic Question Cheat Sheet. Simple one-page document. You can have open on your screen off to the side.

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You know if you’re doing a consult, perhaps by way of Zoom or some other video conference, you can even print it out and have it in front of you if you’re on the phone or just simply, these questions are very simple, commit them to memory, but my Hypnotic Question Cheat Sheet PDF download. That’s going to help you to get there even faster, even easier. One more time, that’s at jasonlinett.com/8. Free download right over there. So here we go. “Persuasive Questions for Business Influence.” Before we get started today, if you want to easily grab people’s attention, naturally, build authority, and organically have your prospects wanting more from you even before you make an offer, I’ve created a step-by-step strategy to help you to do just that. I call it The Video Influence System. This is your opportunity, now, to discover my highly effective, entirely free on-demand workshop at jasonlinett.com. It’s specifically for entrepreneurs who want to deliver premium value to their

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clients to receive premium value in return. If you want a proven framework to boost your confidence and deliver value every time you go on camera, get The Video Influence System now at jasonlinett.com. A quick story to start to build a foundation for everything that I’m about to get into. That my career began as a hypnotist, working with private clients very often, one to one or even in groups. Very often for things like changing habits and behaviors, helping to eradicate fears, helping people to kind of rewrite that dialogue in their mind. Here’s this old problematic event that you may have lived through and let’s use the hypnotic process to kind of interrupt that old negative cycle and instead build this new positive cycle of what you want to experience instead. Basically, here’s an idea. What if that story that’s been holding you back can now become instead that catalyst

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to become every reason why you don’t have to live in that old problem ever again? And here’s the foundation of what I’m getting at, which was, first of all, the experience for me is that as I was looking to grow my own business many years ago, as much as I was going to conferences and trainings to advance my skills as a hypnotist working with private clients, I was also going to marketing conventions, going to sales trainings and noticing already the correlations that very often the language patterns were almost identical and it was just simply the need to go in and look at what was the statement also doing? What were the pictures in people’s minds that you were creating by, again, as the theme is today, asking the right questions at the right time? So there’s a mindset here in terms of hypnotic language patterns. What we’re actually doing by asking questions is we’re taking people out of their surface structure thinking. We’re taking people out of labels, and themes, and bigger picture ideas and

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instead we’re breaking it down into the individual building blocks of reality. Just for a few more moments, let me put this into a personal change coaching or even therapeutic context so this will make more sense to you as I get into the business applications. You could go into a room and if you were in that room and you asked 100 people in that room, all 100 people, “How do you feel right now?” All 100 of them might respond that they feel anxious, which, statement number one, you’re probably in the wrong damn room. That aside, you ask a hundred people, “How do you feel?” They all respond they feel anxious. Here’s the thing, though. The moment you then follow up with another question, “What does that feel like when you feel anxious?” Or another variation as it would be in a coaching environment, “If you had to teach me what it feels like when you feel that anxious, how would you describe that?” It’s basically the same question, just a little bit more clever of a way of getting there.

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It invites more description. All of a sudden now you’ve taken them out of that surface structure decision and instead you’re now going into what we call the deep structure of unpacking their realities where now I’ve heard all sorts of things in that world over the years. It felt as if there was like this weight bearing down on my chest. Here’s one that kept me up at night. It felt like there was a scream about to come out but it just wouldn’t come out. Yeah. We resolved that, though. So it’s, again, by breaking down the reality. Now we’ve actually got something tangible to work with because, otherwise, if this was a therapeutic or a coaching conversation, “How do you feel?” They all say anxious. If I attempted to then work on that, I’d only be working on the label. I’d be working on the word. And do you see the conflict in that? So look at the nature of whatever your business might be. Someone says, “I want to earn more money.”

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If you’re some sort of business consultant, coach, branding designer, what have you, until we have follow-up information, we don’t yet know what that means, which is a side note for future content here on this process, in this series, it’s the power of ambiguous words. I’ll make it a point to very rarely say things like book more clients because if you’re in a coaching, consulting, or some sort of service-based business, chances are, you might not want more clients. Here’s someone I worked with recently for their business. And he used to be the handyman. And now he’s the full surface contractor. Well, he doesn’t want to be going to a different house every single day, these days. No. He wants to be selling this big five or even six-figure renovation, which has them now in one property. And as he put it, “My ideal calendar,” he goes, “Ten customers a year.” That way, again, it’s these big projects and we could spend time doing quality work as opposed to just swapping out a faucet or making that one outlet not work.

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So the context here is, from my world, let me share with you a principle of you’re either in two modes of communication. And there’s some technical jargon here. My job, again, is always to help you to get there faster and easier. So I’ll simplify this for you. The two models of the world from a hypnotic standpoint would be that you’re either in the Meta-Model, which is where you’re now gathering information. And I’ll give you the specifics and details of that. That’s part of what the resources here, the Hypnotic Question, Cheat Sheet, again, jasonlinett.com/8. That’s where you can get that free download that’s going to give you some of those questions. As a preview, we’re either getting into specifics or we’re going into value-based statements, and I’ll give you all the techniques in terms of how to do that in a few moments. So we’re either in that Meta-Model, which for right now, all you need to remember is this, in the metamodel, we are gathering information. We’re a detective.

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We’re asking the right questions at the right time and by doing so, we are eliciting their model of the world. And the benefit now becomes they’re feeding to us their buying strategies. They’re feeding to us what’s important to them, to which then we can ethically and appropriately utilize that to better deliver the sales process that will get them inside the product or service that’s going to help them to acquire the outcome that they wish to achieve. Meta-Model gathering information. On the flip side of that is the Milton Model. And part of the history of this is that Milton Erickson was a hypnotist, primarily a doctor of mental health who also happened to do hypnosis, well-known name in my worlds. And he was known as a very effective practitioner of hypnosis during his day. And the Milton Model, thus named after Milton, though he was not the only, there were many contemporaries and many other big names, sort of godfathers of modern-day hypnotic applications

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of language, whether it be for change work or business as I’m sharing with you here in the Hypnotic Language Hacks series. So Milton Model, that would be…let’s use this briefly as a coaching or even therapeutic context, that’s where now we’re putting that information to use. So Meta-Model, we’re gathering information, Milton Model, we’re putting it into use to create a result, which if this were personal change, that would be again about facilitating an outcome. In our context, it would be very likely enhancing relationship or creating a sale. That’s our context here on Hypnotic Language Hacks. So Meta-Model, gathering information, Milton Model, putting it into use. Here’s why I give you that as a foundation, even before I get into the questions. If you ever find yourself in a business process and perhaps you don’t yet know what you should say, you feel stuck. You don’t know what the person needs to hear. You have no idea what they’re looking for.

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It means you’re in the wrong part of this equation. Here’s what I mean by that. You’re trying to go for the close. You’re trying to go for the sale when you don’t yet have the criteria, the information in order to best do that. So when all else fails, ask. Keep that in mind as a very simple formula. So this week’s content is all about the Meta-Model questioning. And to give you some of the jargon from my world, but to put it into a context you can use for your business. In the Meta-Model, we’re either doing one of two things. We are either chunking down or we are chunking up, which you can set aside the technical vocabulary and jargon. Again, my job is to make this faster and easier for you. Chunking down. All you need to remember for that is we are going into specifics. So let’s use a coaching example for a moment just to drive the point home. Someone says I would like to exercise more. What does that mean? We don’t know yet.

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So very likely, as you should, there ought to be some follow-up questions. What would that exercise be? What would be the frequency? When would you like to be doing that? Those are examples of chunking down questions. If you want to take one question to become your go-to Meta-Model, which, by the way, a little bit later, I’m going to give you the strategies to soften this and let it not feel as if it’s an interrogation because if you don’t ask the questions in the right way, this becomes intrusive, this becomes annoying, and it breaks rapport. So I’m going to give you the strategies to resolve that along the way too. We’ll put some of those softener things also in that Hypnotic Question Cheat Sheet as well for you. So the one simple question you could easily remember for Meta-Model is that of what specifically do you mean by that? Or what’s a specific example of that? The use of the word specific is a good cue that we’re going down into specifics. Chunking down is going down into the specifics of the statement they just made.

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We’re going beyond the surface structure of what they’ve said instead of now going into the deep sea structure of what do they mean by that? So let’s put this into a business context. Let’s use my handyman client as an example who was looking at building out this full-service contractor. As he’d ask a person, “What are your plans with your house?” And they would say, “I’d like to renovate my kitchen.” Now, pause right there. And here’s what happens. This is how we’re breaking down the realities of communication. I would like to renovate my kitchen. The moment that statement is made, perhaps you have pictures in your mind right now as to what that means in terms of the kitchen renovation. Meanwhile, I have a different set of pictures. And very obviously, unless we start to get into the specific of what that renovation might be, if I try to go for the sale, if I try to close that client, I don’t yet have the criteria to do so.

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I might be pitching the wrong things, the wrong appliances, the wrong layout. Maybe there are specific considerations, maybe there are specific sanitary type things. One time we rented a house with a couture kitchen, there was two of everything. That is a dream to me. So whatever those may be, again, asking the specifics. So what would he then say in his sales process? This was, again, not about having the snappy comeback, it was instead very simply. Now, when you say renovate your kitchen, what specifically does that mean for you? What things do you want to have in your kitchen? Now he’s getting their criteria and now he’s coming into alignment with specifically what their goals ought to be and what those things are. Might even be getting into the specifics as it should be, as in, “What kind of budget did you have in mind for this project?” Because that’s very clearly to define exactly what that might be. I believe, as he said, if they’re looking to just kind of upgrade the appliances and maybe, you know, change out some handles on cabinets,

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maybe that might just be like between $3,000 or $5,000. Meanwhile, rip the entire kitchen out and put something new in its place, that might be minimum $30,000 and up. So, again, by asking the right questions at the right time, what did that do for him? It informed him what images of previous clients’ completed projects he should be showing. It informed him what stories he should be telling. So asking the right questions is exactly what informs us how to better navigate that person through that process. That being said, we are creatures of emotion. We like to think that we’re very logical. We’d like to think we’re very rational. And to some degree we are, yet the truth is we tend to be more emotional. We very often make emotional decisions and then only after the fact come up with the rationalizations and the logic to then validate why we made some sort of emotional decision. Think about that for a moment.

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How can we make use of that in an appropriate way to elicit the emotional decision factors of your prospect so now we’re selling towards their desired outcomes? Well, that’s a perfect transition out of chunking down to now go into chunking up. Chunking up is a very simple concept of going into value-based statements. Remember I gave you one question for chunking down to simplify the process? What specifically do you mean by that? Your question you could ask for chunking up is to simply ask, “And what’s that going to give you? And by having that, what’s that going to give you? What result is that going to create in your life?” These are great examples of chunking up questions. So the roadmap of this is very often to begin by chunking down, getting into those specifics. As I would say, very often, in business, let’s get the nuts and bolts. What are the factors that they’re looking for? What are the specific tangibles that they want to have having made use of your

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product or service? And then once we have that, now that we have the foundation for exactly what their criteria is in terms of the deliverables, the outcomes, the results that they want to create, now let’s start to appeal to those emotional aspects by then chunking up. “And by having this renovated kitchen, what’s that going to give you?” “Oh. Well, you know, our kitchen right now is kind of a place of conflict in our home. That it’s very small and by knocking out that side room that we don’t even use, we can put a big kitchen island, the oven can be far away from the sink. The appliances can be on the other side and just, we can have this whole layout where now my husband and I can be in the space together and we can coexist. We’re not going to be bumping into each other. And we’re not going to be throwing the kids into the living room to avoid the kitchen because they are on our way too, because we’re going to have that breakfast nook where they can be seated, they can be coloring,

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and here’s all the stuff that could be happening.” Wow. Did you see what just happened there? By asking those questions, now we’ve got the full story. And perhaps, in your business, if you hear something like that, you might have previous client success stories where they achieve something more than just the fact that their kitchen was renovated. They achieved something more than the fact that their taxes were completed on time. They completed something more other than the scale says they’re 20 pounds lighter. And to have these emotional leverage points. Wow. That is incredible. We can begin to speak directly to that and we can get into better alignment with exactly what their goals are. So let’s recap where we are right now. If you don’t know what you should be doing in your sales process, it means you’re in the wrong part of your sales process. Stop trying to close, instead, start to go back and elicit more information. Begin by chunking down, in the Meta-Model, chunking down, asking for the specifics.

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Once you have all the nuts and bolts, now you can begin to chunk up into the value-based emotionally-triggered statements. If we were to stop right here, if right now was the end of this podcast session and you were to go out and start to make use of this stuff, you would start to see some really cool benefits. Yes, there’s going to be some missing gaps in terms of how to transition this into a closing process, how to deal when there’s possible objections. And these are some of the things that I cover inside of my program, Business Influence Systems. The other side note would be that you might end up becoming annoying to people, which let’s resolve that right now, which as a preview, this was not the side effect I was warning you about. Stick around to the end because there’s a more positive side effect that I should caution you about. First of all, let’s address the negative. The negative side effect is if all you’re doing is asking the questions of, “Well, what specifically do you mean by that?

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What’s an example of that? What else? What else what’s that going to give you?” You might become annoying. You might become rather intrusive. It might feel as if they’re suddenly in an interrogation and that’s just not good for business. It’s a very quick way to break rapport. And let’s not have you do that. Instead, this is where we can simply soften the process by way of a strategy, which I’ll put these in the Hypnotic Question Cheat Sheet over at jasonlinett.com/8. I’ll give you a few of these softener questions, these softener statements or even tag questions. Here’s a couple of examples. The premise of this is I’m going to be framing my question in a different way rather than just, you know, sort of pinging the questions off the person, making them feel as if they’re being, you know, sort of interrogated, as it were. “Hey, just so I’ve got the right information so I’m sure I can help you out, when you say you want to renovate a kitchen, like what specifically does that mean for you?” Do you see what just happened there?

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Now there’s a context to the question. Now there’s a reason why the question was asked. “Just so I know exactly what you mean by that.” Another example of that would be. “Now, I’ve got a good idea in terms of, my head, what you possibly mean by that, but just to be sure so I’ve got it in my notes. When you say more space in the kitchen, like give me some examples of what that means. And just so I know the end result of this, you want this, you want this, you want this, and you want that to have those elements in your home. Let’s fast-forward the story. It’s a year from now, what’s that going to give you? What’s on the other side of that? So it’s by framing the questions, which if you take one thing from the segment about adding in some softeners to your language, it’s just simply this, frame the question. Here’s one that I tend to use very frequently, especially with the folks in my accelerator program, my business consulting students. “Now, I know what that means in my words, but just to get it in your words,

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because that’s always better, what do you mean by financial freedom? So it’s the sort of meeting of the minds that now I can speak your language, I understand what you’re looking for, though, so I can better serve you, what specifically does that mean for you?” Which is kind of a split chunking up, chunking down if you’re tracking the questions here. So the benefit, again, becomes is we’re now softening the questions by simply applying a frame to what’s now been shared. “Just so I’ve got the right information for my notes so I’m certain we can deliver the right product immediately, what exactly do you want in that kitchen? And just so I’ve got the right images to start to pull for you, what kind of colors would you be looking for?” Rather than, “What colors? What brands of appliances? What do you want?” That’s weird. Don’t do that to people. Instead, add in some softeners as well as perhaps what we call tag questions. Your easiest tag question would be, “Hey, do I have that right? Does that make sense? Sound good?

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Is this kind of what you’re looking for?” Asking those tag questions kind of softens the process and makes it feel a whole lot less intrusive. And, again, I’ll throw some of those into that cheat sheet for you as well. So this, by the way, was not a podcast episode about teaching you strategies for building more dynamic rapport. This was not a podcast about creating positive relationships with people and using that as a means to advance and enhance the dynamic of that relationship and by doing so, make it even easier to eventually close the appropriate sale. This was not a podcast on rapport. However, it really has been because by now feeding back the information that the person has shared with you, you are validating that you’ve been listening to them. You are validating that you are seeing them, observing them, and you’re there with them. You’re feeling what they feel. You’re seeing what they see, you’re hearing what they’re hearing.

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And, again, the benefit becomes, this is one of the potential side effects. There’s the big one coming in a bit, though. The benefit of this now becomes the fact that now you are enhancing rapport. And let me be so bold to say that so many people in business fail to do this. What happens instead? “Hey, I want to renovate my kitchen.” “Tell me about that.” “Well, the process begins at $30,000.” We don’t yet know what we don’t yet know. Begin with their specific goals, begin with their specific outcomes, and then chunk up to find out the emotional leverage points. This is what’s going to validate for the both of you if it makes sense to do business with each other, right? It allows you to appropriately to ethically exit the process if something’s not quite a fit for that person that being said by simply using this as another softener strategy. “Now, when you say you want to have more space in the kitchen so the kids could be at the breakfast nook table and your husband could be the other side of the

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kitchen,” what if I’ve been doing, I’ve been reiterating, I’ve been feeding back exactly what the prospect gave me. So to have one, on two, and three ratifying that I’ve actually been listening, two ears, one mouth, keep that in mind. I can now chunk up. “So you’ve mentioned that you want to have the kids at the breakfast nook, your husband on the other side of the kitchen so you’ve got more space, to have all of that just so I know the best way to design this space in terms of the look and feel, when you’re now in that space, what’s that going to give you? What’s that going to create in your family?” And now for some of you, that might feel like a bit of an intrusive question. That’s going very deeply personal. This might be for some of you who are here now thinking maybe, “Wait a minute, I’m a contractor. I’m not a therapist.” Well, the truth is we’ve now earned the right to have that deep of a level of conversation. We’ve now earned the right to go that way far into our dialogue.

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And I’ll tell you right now, a while ago, we had a landscaper come out to our home and we had this issue of this one patch of grass in our backyard that just the grass would grow and then it would die because it’s always in the shade. And we were first thinking, “Let’s bring in the expert because he can tell us here’s what you need.” We had gone online and bought all the wrong grass seed the first time through. And as he’s there, he asks a few more questions and he pauses and he goes, “Well, it sounds like you don’t really want grass there, if you don’t mind me saying this. It sounds like you want that as an area for your kids to play. And how about we put this other material down and that way you don’t have to keep it up and you can only do that once, and this way it’s not ongoing maintenance. It’s not seasonal. Would that be a better fit?” If we had called him, think about this. If we had called him and said, “Our grass is dying ” and he goes, “No. Do this instead,” that would have broken rapport. But instead, by feeding back what our specifics were, he earned the right to give an alternative decision.

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So the benefit of this is by feeding back, we are enhancing rapport, deepening the relationship and by doing so, creating a better bond, because, at the end of that, we weren’t about to just, you know, drive down to Home Depot and buy the stuff and do it ourselves. No. He provided the value, therefore, it made perfect sense for him to do this. And, again, my job is always to help you to get there faster and easier, which is why we’ve made that free download the Hypnotic Question Cheat Sheet available. I’ll mention that this one last time, jasonlinett.com/8. That’s where you can get that download. Though I promised you there’s one dangerous side effect to everything I’ve now shared with you. And this is not about getting the fastest sale, the highest amount of money to then sort of, you know, slash and burn your audience. No. My goal is always to help you to turn your prospects into your clients, into raving fans so you’ve got a massively sustainable business that now runs itself and people are ready to pay an appropriate premium for your products or services even

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before you ask them to buy. That’s my mission statement in all that I do and share with you. That being said, here is your warning. By asking the right questions at the right time, by taking people out of that surface structure language and instead into the deep structure representations in their mind, you are going to be appropriately driving them to make discoveries, to make epiphanies to create new decisions because up until now, I just want X. Well, really inside of X, it’s one, two, three, four, and definitely five. You’re taking them out of that surface structure thinking, instead into the deep structure, and by doing so, people are going to create breakthroughs. Even if you’re not a coach, a consultant, a therapist, even if you’re not in that world, even if you’re just simply selling a product or some sort of quick service like painting, the benefit becomes,

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you are helping people to make better decisions. And every discovery, every epiphany, every decision that they realize that they’re now making, they’re going to give you all the credit. Think about that for a moment. They’re going to…and here’s the warning. I’m sorry about this. They’re going to think you’re really smart. They’re going to think you’re brilliant. They are going to very often give you the credit for these discoveries and these better decisions that they’re making when all you did was ask the right questions at the right time. So once again, sincerely, I am sorry about this. As a result of putting to use the information I’ve shared with you here today, and to even go deeper with this, with some of the Jedi mind trick in terms of closing strategies I share in my programs, to make use of this,

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people are going to think you’re really, really smart. People are going to think you are brilliant and by doing so, they’re going to be so ready to pay for your products and services. I’m sorry. You have been listening to the Hypnotic Language Hacks podcast with Jason Linett. Please stop everything and start exploring jasonlinett.com for even more business influence and persuasion resources. Make it a priority right now to subscribe to this program and listen to every episode because the next one may reveal that one hypnotic influence secret to massively scale your success. Change your words, change your business, change your life. Get even more at jasonlinett.com.