Offline Warriors - Notes to Remember - Do You Win, Lose or Forfeit?

After doing offline work for many years now, I've seen some consistent trends that continue to put money in my pocket (as late as an hour ago!).

I just had another meeting with a client that wants a full social marketing campaign created for them. (love when I hear that). But during the meeting, it was like "Deja Vu all over again". This meeting went like many of my meetings go.

When we were ending the meeting, I asked if they liked what they heard from me (one of may favorite qualification questions). They (three of them) said "yes, you were very informative, professional and above all .... responsive. What you presented is exactly what we discussed on the phone." I thought hmmmmm ... "professional, responsive"? Why did they say that? After all, all I did was answer the phone last week, chat for 20 minutes to get some scope, set a time to meet and showed up. Hmmm....

Then we got to the point of the meeting where I asked the $1M question - "So ..... how many other companies do you expect to get proposals from?". (Gotta know who I'm playing against) Simple enough, right? Well, when I got the answer, I knew I'd heard it before...many times. They looked at each other and said - "Well, it's just you". I said, "really?". They said - "Yes, we've called five other marketers for interviews. We've left voice mails for two of them that never returned our call from a week and a half ago, one was just plain rude on the phone, one talked to us like we were idiots, and the one that met with us was creepy looking and very unprofessional".


Long story short, I took away the same learnings I've taken away from a lot of offline meetings;

• Dress professional
• Talk in common terms and don't use Internet/Website/marketing-specific terms
• Don't talk down to them, they don't know what you know, that's why you're there, take advantage of that
• Answer the phone, don't screen calls, be responsive!
• Get the major goals and success criteria in the first call
• Set the appointment in the first phone call
• Show up on time (if you're not early, you're late)
• Be prepared with a presentation that fits the customer's needs

This seems like common sense, but I can't tell you how many times my customers told me the same things these ladies did. I've won more web development / marketing deals because I "showed up" than I have because I was the best at what I do.

I look at offline jobs like a game. This morning I said to myself - "I won on a forfeit again!. The other team(s) didn't show up".

I hope this helps everyone doing the offline gig. There's a lot more to it than I can get into in this note, but if you're just responsive, approachable, and professional, you can win by forfeit too!

Mark