Dear Dolphins,
“Dear God, please put the words in my mouth that need to be heard today to help somebody.”
I say this prayer every day. The more I put my attention on helping people – on their needs instead of mine – the better business I do and the happier I am. A sign I posted near my phone says, “Somebody needs your help.” That’s what drives me to speak, to go network, and then pick up the phone and call someone.
Marketing is just holding your hand up and saying this is what I do. If anyone needs this, here I am!
Sales is reaching out to someone you think might need your product or service and making it easy for them to find out more about it.
Last week, I was making calls to people who had attended one of my recent talks. Several people remarked that they were surprised I really did call them, even though I said I would! One woman admiringly called me, “She Who Calls.” That made me laugh!
In one recent 8-week Financial Stress Reduction teleclass, I was reminding all the participants of the importance of making calls (Gold Calls, not cold calls).
“All of you are here in this class because I called you,” I said.
“Yeah, but I was already 70% closed on taking this class after I heard you speak,” said one woman.
“Really?” I said. “So if I hadn’t called you, would you have called me?” I asked.
“No,” she admitted sheepishly.
Another woman piped up then, “I was 70% closed on taking this class after I heard you speak, too!”
“Uh, huh”, I said. “And if I hadn’t called you, would you have called me?”
“No.”
You see the problem. There are people out there now who have seen you at a networking meeting, met you at a party, heard about your work from a friend, got a referral to you from an associate, read your blog or your book, saw your ad, liked your Facebook page, follows you on Instagram, etc. etc. etc.
And they are already 70% closed on working with you!
But they aren’t going to call you. Why? I gave the reasons in Zero to Zillionaire:
“Because they have a life, they have priorities, they need clients themselves, they have another appointment, it’s their mother’s birthday, they have to wash their hair. You and your stuff are way down at the bottom of their priority list. Even if what you have is what they most need and close to the top of their list, they aren’t going to call you. They have fears. They have objections: You’re going to charge too much, they really should remodel their house first, it’s their daughter’s birthday tomorrow, maybe you aren’t really the best one for the project, it’s too far to drive, they’d have to convince their Significant Other and that might mean an argument and that would lead to problems and oh it’s just easier to forget the whole thing…”
Do you really think you can allay their fears through an endless series of emails? Or texts? Or ads?
You need to get really good at making calls. In a call, you can have a conversation, find out their needs, and understand if they would truly benefit from working with you. Then and only then can you coach people past their fears and objections to take action to achieve the life of their dreams.
I teach people how to do this in my classes. If you'd like some help with this, let's have a conversation, okay? Call me at 310-476-1622 and experience my Gold Call style for yourself. You’ll see how easy and user-friendly it can be!
