Former students of mine, without naming names, have gone on to attempt to teach criteria elicitation. For what it's worth, this synthesis of a very complex body of knowledge down to one question, is absolutely fine if you're not interested in working with high end and affluent client?le.

The problem with asking a question over and over is that you're going to piss people off and they aren't going to want to deal with you. So therefore, 'What's important about money? What's important about that? What's important about that? What's important about that?' ad nauseum doesn't work. You're really shoving your prospects down a rabbit hole and it's not in the least bit effective.

When complex material gets distilled for 'the masses', then you have to kind of cut corners. Fortunately, I have a very sophisticated clientele who understand the value of really getting this stuff the way I teach it. It's higher education versus the pop psychology version. Trying to condense it really depletes it of its value.

The big frame is: what's the point of all of this?

If the point is just to make a quick sale, you've missed the point. Why do we use criteria?

The reason we use criteria is not because we're trying to get a Band-Aid approach or a short cut, it's because we genuinely need to understand the model of the world of the customer that we're sitting in front of so that we can enter into it with them, not so we can banter about with it. We're figuratively entering into their model of the world with them to get to that state of mind.

Once we're there, we bring our criteria in the back door and we get in there and expand their model. That is where persuasion takes place.

Criteria is the laser focus on what they need and want, it's also the overriding frame.

The simple way of looking at it is, what business do we have trying to sell somebody something if we don't know if it will be of value to them?

Persuading is becoming a master of communication, not just a memorizer of a few patterns.

That doesn't cut it. That never has cut it, it never will cut it, and if you don't have a full on commitment to mastery, you're not going to cut it. Sooner or later, you will become irrelevant.

You are in your fields today that you're in because you have a commitment to that field.

If you are in a field that deals with selling, you must have a full on commitment to absolute mastery of communication, psychology and how the two interrelate.

Criteria is an entry point: it's a beginning point, it's an end point, it's a mid way point, it's a frame. There are some out there that use it sort of as the "new fashioned" sales techniques but it's really so much more.

You know that when you start asking people questions which you don't care about the answer to, it's as bad as saying, 'So, if I can show you a way to save energy, time, and money today, you would be interested in moving ahead with it, wouldn't you?'

It's as stupid as that. And yet, there are still people who will do that.