Key Questions I Always Ask in My Private Lender Presentations

  Here’s the thing about private lenders… if you’re going to get in bed with them (figuratively speaking, of course), you better know how to walk the walk and talk the talk.

But you already knew that, right? In my previous blog post, I shared with you the blueprint for creating powerful up-front agreements. We talked about why up-front agreements are so potent and why they should precede any and all of your private lender presentations.

So today, I want to talk about the nitty gritty of the presentation – once you’re into it. And it all boils down to 8 key questions.

Do I always include these 8 strategic questions in my presentations?

Absolutely!

These questions will help reveal the private lender’s motivation and goals, directly to YOU, and because the following questions can help open the private lender’s mind to what you’re about to present.

Look, these intuitive questions will help you set the stage and get your private lender’s mind primed up for what you’re about to propose.

Keep this in mind as your learn these 8 questions – the investor evaluation is about invoking emotions, uncovering goals and identifying personal processes, all of which will aid you in successfully presenting to a prospect.

Emotional questions

When it comes firing key questions at your private lender prospects, you want to ask questions that:

1) Elicit Motivation or Pain

2) Reveal Goals

3) Identify Decision Making Processes

Here’s a little disclaimer about these first set of questions. (Don’t panic.) It’s pretty basic but worth mentioning.

People by nature will retreat from pain and gravitate toward pleasure. That’s a natural response for most of us anyway. By asking the types of questions above and actually paying close attention to the responses (this requires awesome listening skills, BTW) you have the power to guide your prospect toward your desired end result.

When people get in touch with their emotions, they’re more likely to understand what is driving them. And, once they understand what is driving them, they are more willing to connect with it, accept it and run with it, which is good news for you!

So what are some questions that can elicit motivation or pain?

 » What experience do you have investing?

 » Are you happy with your current investment returns?

It’s so important to discover if your potential lender has participated in recent investments and to what extent. Find out what returns they have received, and then investigate further…

Maybe your prospect is motivated by a poor investment decision where money was lost, or maybe they are just tired of making low returns on mutual funds. Like many, maybe your investor took a bullet with the stock market.

Bottom line, if you can uncover your prospect’s motivation, chances are you have a good potential private investor.

Goal-related questions

“Are you more interested in building wealth or making a quick buck?”

This is a great question that will quickly uncover your prospect’s goals, and (P.S.) long-term goals are what you want to hear about.

Here’s the difference. Wealth over the long run has a positive connotation while making a quick buck has a negative one. Interesting, right?!

The longer the term you can negotiate with a private investor, the better!

“How do you think our investment program could help with your investment goals?”

You want to get your lender prospect thinking about all the positive attributes of a good investment. Positive thoughts invoke positive responses, right? Well, typically anyway.

So, get the positive juices flowing in the hopes of positive feedback.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. If your prospect respond negatively (and it will happen from time to time), you need to be prepared.

Here are some common negative responses. Get comfortable with them, so you will better know how to respond proactively when they come your way.

• “I don’t even know if you can help.”
• “How do I know I’ll get my money back?”

When faced with these negative, uncertain responses, I challenge you to fire back. Put the responsibility of the response back on the prospect by asking questions like:

• “When you find the right investment program, whether it’s ours or someone else’s, how would the right investment help with your investment goals?”
• “What would the right investment provide for you?”

This is another similar question to put the prospect in the driver’s seat, so to speak. If you can get your lender to imagine all of the positive benefits of your investment program and actually foresee the benefits, you have a much better chance of converting them from prospect to the real deal.

Decision-making questions

When it comes to digging deeper about your prospect’s decision-making processes, it’s all about the

• How
• When
• Who

Find out how your soon-to-be investor makes decisions to invest. Do they weigh the pros and cons? Do they use past experience as a guiding light? Ultimately, you want to gather as much info as possible, and you’ll find that one answer tends to open the door to the next.

Find out when your prospect wants to hit the “go” button, and remember that negative phrasing can sometimes be effective:

If you found the right opportunity, and I’m not assuming that this is the right one, necessarily, when would you want to get started?

Questions like this demonstrate your unbiased opinion and genuine desire to help regardless of what’s in it for you. Asking questions like this will give you brownie points, so ask away.

Find out who the key decision makers are for your prospect. Remember, if all parties aren’t present, postpone until all the key players can come to the table.

Why?

If you choose to present without all key players present, understand that information gets lost in translation almost without fail. Be prepared to present again, to have to clarify information, and to receive confused questions from those who did not attend. Bottom line, be prepared for more work, and most importantly, know that your chances of converting that lender prospect to an actual private lender has diminished significantly…along with your credibility.

So, make sure all decision makers are present before your present. (See, what I did there with present?!)

The takeaways

Okay, so those are the questions I always ask before jumping into the investment section of my private lender PowerPoint presentation. I actually have slides built into my PowerPoint presentation already that trigger each of these questions.

If you’ve never used my presentation, download it, customize it, and use it to our full advantage…

But make sure you ask these questions not only for your sake so you have the information that you need but also so that your have your prospect’s mind channeled and thinking in a way that’s conducive to what’s next in the presentation when you do begin speaking about the investment opportunity that you have for them.

Let me hear from you

Got any thoughts or questions about this info? Talk to me in the comments section below.