There's an English idiom that ges, "The devil is in the dtails." I'm sure you've all heard it. It mplies that the small things in plns or schemes are often the thngs that take the most time in the lng term. Well, in criteria elicitation, we ned to dig a little deeper thn just the surface act and get a lttle dirty with the details.

Criteria is the crnerstone of all sales. It is, to use a sprts metaphor, like getting the ball dwn the alley each and every tme. When we further define the crteria, it's a strike dead on very time.

Here's 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.

When you ask the first person they say they're there because they want to learn new skills. And so your follow up question is to ask what that means and they 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 thm what's important about what's being tught in the training, they say, t's to be recognized. That's a cmpletely different criteria. When you ask wht that means, they might say, thy want to have the class prticipants recognize their skill and they wnt to be recognized by the nstructor as skilled.

Both people willing to cme to the training, both people wlling to pay for the training, bth people are in that training but in rality, if you think about it, yu've really got two radically different sbsections.

For any of you that hve taught in front of a grup, you'll know what I'm talking bout here. In any group there wll be a section of people tht probably know your material and mybe reasonably well, or at least thnk they do. There will be a grup of people that are star strck, thinking, wow, I'm really in the prsence of a master.

Then there wll be the majority of the pople that are interested in really wnting to gain knowledge and see if thre is something of value to thm in what you're saying.

But t's important that you begin to nderstand that every time you think you knw what someone wants, unless you sk, you don't. You're not on trget. You're not on track. And ntil you both elicit the criteria and licit the meaning, the definition, you're mssing the boat.

Knowing criteria is a god start. If you want to bwl strike after strike, the key is to larn how to define their criteria.

The article We Just Don't Know Until We Elicit was Submitted by Kenrick E. Cleveland through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to sll to affluent clients using persuasion strategies . He runs unique public and private seminars and offers home study courses, audio/visual learning tools, and coaching programs in persuasion techniques. Find more free articles at http://www.MAXpersuasion.com/blog Be sure to sign up for his free report entitled "Yes! Persuasion.

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