Questions Are the Answers

Questions Are the Answers Allan Pease, 2000

A coffee shop in suburban Australia. Allan Pease runs into Frank, his dentist. Frank is forty-four, owns a beachfront house, drives a luxury car, and looks miserable. They sit down. Allan asks how business is going. Frank says, "It's a living, I suppose." Allan does not pitch him a network marketing business. He does not explain the compensation plan. He does not list features or benefits. He asks one question, then another, then another. Within five minutes Frank is talking about the prison he feels dentistry has built around him, the way his marriage is straining under his stress, the kids who are growing up without him because he gets home at seven and is too worn out to play. His face goes pale. His eyes water. He cannot answer the last question because he is too overwhelmed to speak. Allan does not press. He gets up, says he was supposed to be buying cornflakes, and leaves.

Three months later Frank quits his practice. A year later he is in America selling motels on commission and having the time of his life.

Pease did not sell Frank anything. He just asked five questions, in order, and stopped talking. That is the entire premise of this book. People will not be argued into change. They will not be inspired into change. They will only walk through a door they themselves have described. Your job, in any persuasion situation, is to hand them the words for the door and then be quiet long enough for them to find the handle.

The book sits inside a specific frame. Pease wrote it for the network marketing industry, the multi-level distribution model that exploded through the eighties and nineties on the back of vitamins, cleaning products, and home goods. Every example in the book uses MLM language. Every transcript ends with the prospect joining the business. If that frame turns you off, push past it. The mechanics work in B2B sales calls, executive coaching, hiring conversations, partnership negotiations, parenting, dating, and any moment where you need another human being to want what you are offering rather than merely tolerate it. The dentist scene is the giveaway. Pease did not even try to recruit Frank into network marketing. He just demonstrated the technique in the wild and watched a man's life rearrange itself around what the questions surfaced.