How to Make Your Dream Client Want to Meet with You

It is difficult for salespeople to command their prospective client’s time. This is a symptom; it is not the disease. This means that the things that you might do to alleviate the symptom are not likely a cure. The cure would have to eliminate the disease.

Using brute force to gain an appointment by banging away on someone using the telephone or email is one way to try to overcome the symptoms and gain the commitment of time. Automating those communications only moves the brute force approach to technology while the underlying illness is not addressed. Granted, this sometimes works, but don’t let that allow you to pretend that you addressed the underlying problem. It has done no such thing.

Some people recommend taking a more passive view of prospecting, and so believe that the cure is to hang around on social media, interacting and engaging with people in hopes of someone raising their hand and asking you for a meeting. Many who recommend this as the cure have no idea how much more difficult and time-consuming content marketing is when compared to more traditional approaches. They also mistakenly believe that salespeople are content creators and are permitted to post public content in the same way that a person who works for themselves. These folks think that fishing is a better approach than hunting, even though the pond is understocked and overcrowded. This, too, leaves the disease alone to fester.

To treat the disease, you must have something of greater value than the time you are asking your dream client to give you, you must have something so valuable that your dream client would literally pay you for their time, as that is what they are really doing. If your 20-minute meeting doesn’t cause your dream client to discover something about themselves, something that is worth 1,000 times more than the time they gave you, then they are right to refuse your meeting.

Look at the first eight slides in your slide deck. If your marketing firm loves it because it tells your story, you are riddled with this disease, and you should immediately seek help.

Learn more on Trading Value in The Lost Art of Closing.