The Real Deal Offline Series: "What!...Offliners Afraid Of Talking To Business Owners?..."
Hey Offliners,
The other day as I was surfing the warrior forum, I noticed a couple of threads that were getting a lot of comments and views.
So, I opened them up and discovered that those popular threads were talking about offliners who were having problems getting clients.
However, after spending a few minutes reviewing the threads, I found a common theme.
They were all about offliners who were sharing their fears, anxieties and insecurities about talking to business owners.
Now, I'm not really talking about cold calling.
In fact, while I know for a fact that cold calling is a great way to get clients, I personally believe that you must be a mutant if you love, enjoy and actually look forward to calling complete strangers for the rest of your offline career, when you could choose to build marketing systems that generate qualified prospects who call you, but that's a discussion for another day.
No, the threads I saw where talking about simply having face-to-face conversations at Chamber of Commerce meetings or spending time talking to the guy who owns the pizza shop you've been spending money with for five, ten or twenty years.
If that guy won't at least have a conversation with you after you've spent hundreds or thousands of dollars with his business, then you don't want him as a client anyway.
As offliners, we literally can't afford to be afraid to talk to business owners. So, here's some of the things that I do to make sure that I'm not letting fear dictate my offline success.
Tip #1: Be a regular person who's talking to another regular person. So, instead of giving every business owner a elevator pitch right when you meet them, just be normal and introduce yourself as a regular person. Then simply ask them what them what they do and how their business is going. Be a real person.
Tip #2: Ask a ton of questions about them and their business. Be a interested person before you get into a sales pitch. Sometimes, I've spent time talking to a business owner like a regular person and discovered that I absolutely don't want him as a client because he's a jerk.
Tip #3: Downplay your own sales pitch. For example, I have great success by answering the question of what do I do by saying something like this, "Oh, I just help businesses get more customers using the internet," and then I quickly go back to talking about something they brought up about their business earlier.
Nine times out of ten, the business owner will continue the conversation and then go back to start asking me questions about what exactly I can do with the internet to get more customers.
It doesn't hook everyone, but if a business owner is not interested in getting more customers then they really aren't my prospect anyway, so I haven't really lost an opportunity.
These are just a few of the things that I do to help me keep my eyes open for opportunites everywhere that I go.
However, one of the major things that helps me is knowing that I'm prepared by having a professional website, business cards, published books and the actual knowledge and results to prove what I'm saying.
Hope this helps,
Chris Rivers
The other day as I was surfing the warrior forum, I noticed a couple of threads that were getting a lot of comments and views.
So, I opened them up and discovered that those popular threads were talking about offliners who were having problems getting clients.
However, after spending a few minutes reviewing the threads, I found a common theme.
They were all about offliners who were sharing their fears, anxieties and insecurities about talking to business owners.
Now, I'm not really talking about cold calling.
In fact, while I know for a fact that cold calling is a great way to get clients, I personally believe that you must be a mutant if you love, enjoy and actually look forward to calling complete strangers for the rest of your offline career, when you could choose to build marketing systems that generate qualified prospects who call you, but that's a discussion for another day.
No, the threads I saw where talking about simply having face-to-face conversations at Chamber of Commerce meetings or spending time talking to the guy who owns the pizza shop you've been spending money with for five, ten or twenty years.
If that guy won't at least have a conversation with you after you've spent hundreds or thousands of dollars with his business, then you don't want him as a client anyway.
As offliners, we literally can't afford to be afraid to talk to business owners. So, here's some of the things that I do to make sure that I'm not letting fear dictate my offline success.
Tip #1: Be a regular person who's talking to another regular person. So, instead of giving every business owner a elevator pitch right when you meet them, just be normal and introduce yourself as a regular person. Then simply ask them what them what they do and how their business is going. Be a real person.
Tip #2: Ask a ton of questions about them and their business. Be a interested person before you get into a sales pitch. Sometimes, I've spent time talking to a business owner like a regular person and discovered that I absolutely don't want him as a client because he's a jerk.
Tip #3: Downplay your own sales pitch. For example, I have great success by answering the question of what do I do by saying something like this, "Oh, I just help businesses get more customers using the internet," and then I quickly go back to talking about something they brought up about their business earlier.
Nine times out of ten, the business owner will continue the conversation and then go back to start asking me questions about what exactly I can do with the internet to get more customers.
It doesn't hook everyone, but if a business owner is not interested in getting more customers then they really aren't my prospect anyway, so I haven't really lost an opportunity.
These are just a few of the things that I do to help me keep my eyes open for opportunites everywhere that I go.
However, one of the major things that helps me is knowing that I'm prepared by having a professional website, business cards, published books and the actual knowledge and results to prove what I'm saying.
Hope this helps,
Chris Rivers
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