Where Do You Do Your Prospecting?
Since I’ve overcome my shyness, I’ve been able to talk to anyone, anywhere and at anytime. Last summer when I was waiting to hand in my application at the passport office, I looked around and thought that if I’m going to be waiting for an hour+, I might as well be sitting next to a handsome gentleman–you never know who that person could turn out to be (either way, it’s definitely better than screaming kids).
Turns out he worked for a large organization and was just about to launch a small biz sales program. I blurted out, “have you seen what it says on my business card?” We meet at his office the next week and I ended up doing a small biz sales presentation for his clients! All this from picking where to sit when waiting around on a Friday afternoon.
Last week I was in Phoenix as the guest of Infusionsoft, THE small biz marketing automation software company, for their huge SmallBiz ICON15 Conference. It attracts over 3,00 small biz owners from 12 countries.
There I met Heather Woodward, who runs the Diving Wild Woman Community and coaches female leaders. We had an interesting conversation as we waiting in line to get our Sally Hogshead books signed. She asked me for some sales coaching and I asked her to go through her usual sales spiel for me. She started talking and talking and talking. I knew she was losing me, never mind her prospect’s, attention. It was TMI–too much information without getting approval in stages.
Quite a simple fix: before you hit them with the price, first confirm that they like what they’ve heard so far (first yes!)
Are they open to working with you? (next yes)
I call it the “bobble head” affect. You want them bobbing their heads up and down in agreement before you ask them for the order. It makes it seem so much easier if you know ahead of time that everything is going well.
So don’t screw it up at the end. Ask for baby steps of “okays” and “yeses”along the way and THEN tell them what their investment will be and they’ll just nod in agreement. It can be that easy!
Now listen to Heather’s testimonial as we met the next day, just before I rushed off to the airport.
