This Is More Powerful Than Any Sales Tactic...Truly

It happened to me last week.

I was approached by a "offline" biz owner
who thought I could help him with parts of his marketing.

From the email I said lets hop on Skype and talk about it.

At no point was this construed the talk would be a consultation
and a fee attached to it.

Anyway the talk goes in the right direction I wanted...
and that was to tell me his problems.

At first they were about the area he wanted me to assist with.

You should never take the surface problem you are called in to assist.

I'll tell you why after this little story.

So I asked him about what happens when the lead is generated and the phone is answered.

See there are 5 key areas to work on to grow a business
and I was running him through them without him knowing,
at first.

Those 5 are...

1 leads
2 conversion
3 average dollar of transaction
4 frequency of transaction
5 margins

The talk about what the person on the phone says and what the person on site says dug up another problem...
not systems in place, he already had them in place.
Very smart guy.

What the sticking point was enforcement of the rules.

This exposed him to the cold truth which he knew lay in his business
but didn't want to confront it.

So I gave him a way to solve it.

Now I explained the 5 key performance areas to work on together and it only takes a few small percent points to make a BIG
difference to the profit.

And then talked about having a checklist of blocking the holes in each of those 5 areas.

Now he saw the value in all this.

He felt a weight lifted off his shoulders.

First time somebody gave him clarity.

A stranger who exposed what he had been hiding.

There is something way more powerful than any sales tactic
in what I told you...

and that is when somebody confides in you,
there is a almost insuperable bond that has taken place.

This bond allows you to be held in high trust and status
which no amount of engineering can bestow on you.

Back to the story.

He said he wanted to pay me for our time together.

He said just send over a Paypal invoice and he will settle it.

Would you of said, "no don't worry about it"?

I had no attachment to it but granted his wish
and sent an invoice over for $197.

He paid it without question.

We haven't got him over the line for
ongoing paid service yet because of the mess
with his SEO.

That's another story which stays private.

So in the end, if you go deeper and wider in your search for sticking points
in your prospective clients business, you become so valuable that you get paid for
pitching your service, which isn't consulting.

Best,
Ewen