The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 41 Degrees
That’s Tucker right there.
“Allegedly,” he’s a blue tick coon hound, but I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.
What I do know is that he’s a hunter. Watch out if he spots a bird or a squirrel. Once that happens, he goes into pursuit mode.
Every night, Tucker spends some time out in the yard doing his hunter thing. We live in the mountains, so it’s not infrequent that we might have coyotes or javelina passing by behind the fence.
Getting Tucker inside from this nightly event has always been a challenge. I used to go out on the deck and whistle and shout for him to come in. (Dear Neighbors, I know it looked like I was crazy, sorry!!)
The more I did that, the more I got ignored. I know the sucker could hear me calling him. But he didn’t act like it.
One night, I chanced on a way to get my dog inside that works almost like magic.
I don’t go outside anymore and yell. I don’t stand at the door and whistle. Heck, I don’t even get up off the couch! In fact, doing any of those things only keeps the dog outside.
The secret is to sit there where he can’t see you and give a little whistle. “Come on Tucker!”
As it turns out, dogs like two things: they like to chase and they like to be chased.
Once you get that, everything changes. Originally, I took the role as the pursuer. The dog FELT that and reacted accordingly.
I chanced upon the way to flip that around and put the DOG in pursuit mode.
And that’s all it takes.
I kid you not it looks like magic. And I look FAR less ridiculous when I don’t have to stand out there for 20 minutes calling to a dog who seems to enjoy ignoring me.
Hmmmm…. now what does that sound like? It sounds like the natural order of things when you work with clients.
Attract or pursue. That’s the choice you have to make. One way is easy, one way is hard.
That’s what we talk about in The Rainmaker Letter. It’s about engineering attraction. In the last issue, I showed how I did it with a 5 figure service.
You don’t HAVE to master this skill, of course. You can always do like I did and just stand out on the deck calling to the dog. Unfortunately, it’s just not that effective. It takes a lot of energy and you end up feeling dumb standing out there yelling at beings that are tuning you out.