The Client Letter
December 9, 2013
The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 28 Degrees
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From the perspective of someone who wants clients, the whole idea of pushing your prospects away might sound like a crazy idea.
Why would any sane person do anything to push a prospect away?
To explain the reason why, take a look at my oh so crude drawing of some magnets over to the right.
(I’m knee deep in finishing up a special report that’s serving as the next issue of The Rainmaker Letter, so I have the whole idea of polarity on my mind.)
Imagine two magnets hanging down from a beam. (The red circles are magnets and no, I’m not considering a career in art.) Given no interference, and given that opposite poles are facing each other, those magnets are going to attract each other.
Now what happens if you take each of those magnets and gently push them AWAY from each other?
What’ll happen is that they will come back together at an even greater speed–with even more force.
I don’t know what the scientific name for this is, but this is the very effect that seems to happen when someone is “playing hard to get.” It increases the power of the attraction.
If you’ve never played “hard to get” with your prospects, you might want to try it. The reason you do it is simple: because it just works better than not doing it.
The operative word here is “play.” Business is a game. You can play it or you can refuse to play it.
I went through several years during which I was “too good” to play the game. I have to admit, during those years of refusing to play, I didn’t have a whole lot of winning going on.
I wasn’t playing the game, so I was losing the game.
Playing hard to get isn’t something you do with abandon. You push it too far and you’ll just look dumb.
But when used at the right times and in the right doses, it’s an extremely powerful selling idea. It’s a little bit like seasoning a dinner entree. Too much salt and you ruin it. Just enough and you look like a genius.
Playing hard to get is fairly counter-intuitive. So you might not believe it works until you actually experience it. And given your particular situation, it might take some guts to execute. Especially if you really “need” clients.
But it’s a very powerful strategy to increase the attraction between your prospects and you.
Your mileage may vary. But if you haven’t worked this idea into your client attraction system, then it’s probably something you should try. See what happens.