Month: October 2016

Tis the season for many social events, where you’ll be spending time with friends, close family, distant relatives, neighbors, and – yes – total strangers.

Many of these people might make great clients for you. Many others may never become clients, but might have the ability to refer and introduce you to others.

Let’s say you’re at a holiday party or other social event and someone asks, “What do you do?” How do you respond? Do you whip out your best elevator speech? Do you pretend you don’t want to talk about the great value you bring to your clients?

Are you blowing an opportunity?

I was reading some sales tips the other day and the author said “Selling services is selling an intangible. You can’t put it in their hands to hold or they can’t take it for a test drive.” Or can they? (Keep reading.)

While I agree that selling a service promise can often be more challenging than selling a product, there are a number of things you can do to make your service promise more tangible to your prospective clients.

Learn the power of using visual representations of your service model and providing prospects a “test drive.”

What’s that definition of insanity again? Oh… right! “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

One form of referral insanity is using outdated methods. Managers and trainers often teach what worked for them, but only produce mediocre results in this new world where we need to blend the analogue side of referrals with the digital side.

There are 5 insanely common and easy to make mistakes that so many people are making in their efforts to boost referrals and introductions.

PLEASE tell me you’re not making these mistakes!

For many years, the “letter of introduction” was a common practice when someone traveled to another city for the purposes of doing business.

The telephone almost, but not quite, replaced the letter of introduction. And the in-person introduction still remains as the highest form of introduction.

So what is the one thing that is so significant to warrant my bold claim?

The Digital Introduction!

Email, LinkedIn, and Texting are becoming the introduction of choice. But are they the most effective?