Home Biz Chat

1. Get New Business From Old. Ask existing clients for more biz before you
try warming up a stone cold lead. Ask the happy clients for referrals to
people they know that you don’t – and be sure to keep track of who
referred whom.

2. Pitch a Stranger. It’s like bad advertising when you blow hot air when
pitching to a new prospect. In face-to-face mediating you’ve got to know
what to say, and say it with conviction.

3. Give It To Me Straight. No one has time for the “warm-up”. Prepare well
honed phrases and practice them in front of a mirror. People like it when
you can get to the point rapidly and intelligently. If it’s by email, make
sure they don’t have to scroll down to read it all.

4. Talk About Your Failures. Seriously! It builds credibility. Everyone can’t
be perfect all the time, and when you can tell a prospect why you lost a
client and what you’ve learned it’s a welcome change. They appreciate not
getting the usual hot air & razzle-dazzle.

5. Offer a “Loss-Leader”. People are less and less apt to buy impulsively from
a person if they don’t have a good feeling about them. Offering a lossleader
allows the relationship to mature over time. This is very important
in B2B clients. (Loss-leader is the practice of offering a product or service
at a considerable discount and loss of profit to attract future business.)

6. Get Sold Yourself. Pick the most successful competitors in your area and
let them sell you. Play customer and be aware of how you feel during each
step, and see why their approach works so well. Auto-makers buy each
others cars and break them down to nuts and bolts. You can do the same
thing in your space.

7. Pitch an Enemy. Find the most disagreeable son of a gun you can find and
pitch him or her. Let them be as nasty as they please, then analyze later if
anything they said had any merit. Be totally unemotional, and don’t
defend anything. You’ll learn where you’re lacking after doing this.

8. Start an E-mail Newsletter. This is much like #5. Give them useful
information week in and week out, or month in and month out. Make
them happy to see your name in the “from” field. If they only hear from
you when you want something, they’ll turn you off when they hear from
you.

9. Offer Testimonials. Satisfied clients or customers can say things about
you that you can never believable say about yourself. Use the person’s full
name if possible when doing this. “KM from Buffalo” isn’t nearly as strong
as “Kenneth Moore from Buffalo”.