I'd like to tell you a story about a sales call I had and this was someone who is referred to me to join strategic coach and very good referral and you know the person who referred this particular man into strategic coach was a long time very very successful entrepreneur and a really great fan of strategic coach so anyway I got on the call let's say his name was Jack and I said and I said hi jack it's Dan I'm really happy to talk to you and he said that his the person referred to him he said you know he said such good things about you but he didn't really tell me what the program was about so could I could I just spend a few minutes learning how this program actually works and I said to him well before I tell you how it works I'd like to ask you a question and what the question is that if we were having this discussion and it was three years from today and you were looking back over your experience over the past three years both personally and professionally what has to happen for you to be happy with your progress okay and then I didn't say anything more I just let the questions sit there and and this is nothing I want to tell you that after you've asked your question don't say anything because one thing you know by the silence is that the question is really landed and so after what seemed to me like a minute it was probably only 10 or 15 seconds he said well I'll tell you Dan he said 3 years 3 years ago I was a complete and total alcoholic and he said it's taken everything that I could do over the last 3 years just to dig myself out of Oh holes so I'm just at ground level now and I have to tell you this is what I want to do over the next three years this is what has to happen in my life over the next three years and he went on and from the moment he started talking I checked my watch and when he got to the end of 23 minutes so he talked for 23 minutes straight I just asked the question let him think about it and the person talked for 23 minutes and when he was finished the 23 minutes he says well Dan he said you're proud your program sounds really really good and he says so let me know how I sign up for it so when I tell that story it always gets a big laugh at the end and you know people say well if you didn't tell him anything about the program and I said well did I tell him anything about the program and you know and some people Twigg to what's happened right away and they said well yeah you did tell him you told him that the program was going to be about him and not about you and I said yes and that's exactly what most people want to know about buying anything is this is this whole experience going to be about you the salesperson or is it going to be about me the customer and by keeping my mouth shut for 23 minutes I absolutely convinced him that the whole purpose and the focus of the strategic coach program was really going to be about about him and things that were most important in his life and there were other things that happened in this discussion that I had with this person and first of all it established the fact that the number one thing that we buy when we involve ourselves in any kind of transaction in the marketplace the first thing that we actually buy is a relationship before we buy a product or a service or an experience the first thing that we actually buy is a relationship and what he was doing when he got on the line with me from the moment I started talking and I didn't talk very long because I just talked about a question he was evaluating is this a relationship that I'm actually going to buy and by the fact that I just asked a very open-ended question this this question wasn't for my benefit this question was actually for his benefit he could make a very very good judgment about whether he wanted to have a relationship with me personally and whether he wanted to have a relationship with strategic coach so based on the fact that this is really about relationship we call this question the rFactor question the rFactor question and sometimes it's called the Dan Sullivan question because I'm the one who came up with the question and but I recommend anybody who's in any line of work where you're selling something to actually use this question and the reason why it works besides the things that I've already told you about namely that the other person is doing the talking which is always good for a sale and the other thing is that it gets them to buy a relationship and the other things that tells them that you they trust you they they would never someone who you know had a experience with alcoholism and was really his what he was telling me about was failure you would never tell that to a stranger unless you trusted the person so right off the bat what the question establishes is that if they answer the question you can be very sure that they trust you and they made up their mind about that in the first very very few seconds after the question was asked of them so this is called the R factor question I'm just going to repeat it now we have a book that's written coach called the Dan Sullivan question which you can buy at strategic coach calm and but the question is if we were having this discussion and it was three years from today and you were looking back over your experience over the past three years both personally and professionally what has to happen for you to be happy with your progress