My First Potential Offline Customer..

This is money advise. Also, don't try to sell her anything. Ask lots of questions & only speak to educate her on:

1) How she is currently losing business by not doing _______.

2) How she can gain more business by doing ________.

Don't sell anything. Let her know you recommend she do _________.

Then shut up. The next natural question is, well how would I do that.

Then, we (not I...tell her you work with outsourcers and you have a team -- which is not a lie, because you have part of your team helping you get ready for you meeting, IN THIS THREAD).

Don't leave the meeting on a note of "thanks for the information". If so, take note of what you can do in your next meeting to educate her to a point of pain & you can play doctor.

Good Luck Chief

You got some good advice. First client I ever got, I went in with the idea of selling them SEO, and did. Never bothered to find out what they need... Turned out they did think they needed SEO, but that was pure luck.

Ask questions about what they're doing (how are they getting clients, do they get testimonials, what do they do with them, what, if anything, they do about past customers, how do they want as customers (in my experience, most say they want everybody, which gives you the opportunity to sell them some consulting and teach them how narrowing their focus will increase profits), what they want, what they sell, would they be willing to sell something else, or differently, how they price...

One of my clients automatically gave $1,800 to any and all new clients... I thought him to use that only for clients he really wants, if he cannot move them to buy without it... Turns out, he needs to use that very rarely...

Sometimes, business owners I deal with are so used to what they do that they don't see huge savings/advantages that are crystal clear to me right away. Maybe there are things like this with this owner... doing things because they used to work but no longer work and you can point it out and replace it with something better.

My point, ask them 1001 questions about how they do things and what they want... Go home, think about it, think about how you can bring them in more clients or help them sell more to their existing clients... make a plan... present it...

The first appointment, like others have said, isn't for selling but for finding out things and figuring out if or how you can help...

Don't forget to ask how much they're currently spending on marketing and what results they're getting, you'll have an idea of what you can charge and something to use as a bench mark.

You never mentioned what you're good at and what kind of marketing you like to do, but make sure your questions reveal you all you need to know about that/those area(s). It's best to sell what you like to and can deliver.

PS Take notes.