EP 5: Predictive ROI Strategist Libby Stinson Examines How Purposeful Questions Build Trust and Demand

What if the most important question in your next biz dev conversation isn't the one you prepared in advance? What if it's hiding inside the answer your prospect just gave you? Friends, that's exactly what my Predictive ROI teammate Libby Stinson and I are going to deconstruct in this episode of The In-Demand Agency Podcast. Libby is a strategist here at Predictive ROI, but before joining our team, she spent years in law enforcement followed by a decade conducting forensic interviews. She has hundreds of hours of training in interviewing, linguistics, memory, and questioning techniques — and thousands of hours putting those skills into practice in the field. And as Libby discovered when she entered the agency world, those skills translate extraordinarily well into biz dev conversations. Because here's the reality: your prospects are not natural narrators. They summarize. They give you headlines like, "Sales have been slow," "Our marketing isn't working," or "Most of our business comes from referrals." Those are answers — but they're not the whole story. The real story is underneath the surface. And if you and your team don't know how to ask purposeful questions, listen carefully to what comes back, and follow the clues inside those answers, you risk prescribing a solution before you truly understand the problem. Libby calls this "Don't waste the answer." Every answer your prospect gives you leaves clues. Instead of thinking about question number two while your prospect is still answering question number one, Libby teaches us how to stay curious, listen for those clues, and let the answer determine where the conversation goes next. Libby also walks us through three powerful question openings: "Take me back," "Looking back," and "How did you decide?" Each serves a different purpose — helping your prospect move from generalizations into specific experiences, identify patterns, and unpack how previous decisions were made. And when you do that well, something important happens. You stop sounding like every other agency running through a standard discovery-call checklist. Instead, you create an experience that makes a prospect think, "That felt different. No one has asked us that before." That's differentiation. That builds trust. And that's part of how your agency moves from authority to demand. So grab your notebook because Libby gives us a framework you and your team can put into practice during your very next biz dev conversation. What you'll learn in this episode: Why prospects naturally summarize instead of telling you the whole story How to follow the clues in every answer instead of jumping to your next question, possibly wasting your prospect's answers How "Take me back," "Looking back," and "How did you decide?" uncover deeper insights Why words like "usually," "always," "never," and "pretty good" signal there's more to explore How purposeful questions create trust, differentiation, and help turn authority into demand Resources: Free Download: Don't Waste the Answer Diagnostic(opens in new tab) Visit our new Predictive ROI website(opens in new tab) Connect with Libby Stinson on LinkedIn(opens in new tab) Find our mini workshops and trainings on YouTube