The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 70 Degrees
So what can you do when a client is “on the fence” about hiring you and they just aren’t sure you are the way to go?
My recommendation would be to do nothing. Not because you can’t, but because you shouldn’t.
Getting the client “off the fence” is a bad move, UNLESS you are out of the picture once the sale is complete.
If you have to stick around and work with the client, however, you are setting yourself up for a mess.
If you begin a relationship with a client and the dynamic is that you have to “prove yourself…” that the client is giving you a chance and you’d better “produce…” well, I have some bad news:
You’ve already lost. It’s just a matter of time.
We humans are interesting creatures. Instead of going through our lives with an open mind, the more common thing is to go through life looking for proof to back-up what we already believe.
So while you might wow the client the first time, eventually, they are going to come upon the proof they need (that they just knew deep down was there all along!) to validate their original belief: that you don’t “have what it takes.”
None of this has anything to do with reality of course, but if you’ve been in business for more than a week, you already know that reality rarely comes into play.
This is why you get a Platform. Your Platform can take many forms, but the function is the same. Your Platform (newsletter, blog, etc.) AMPLIFIES your signal so it can be seen and heard by prospective clients. This is why you think long and hard about the best way to show up and be valuable in the life of your prospects.
Over time, they sell themselves on you.
And that means, that by the time they hire you, the belief they have in their mind is that you are just what they need. And then they go searching for the proof of THAT.
Build a Platform, do the work, reap the benefit.
It’s not fast, and sometimes it’s not pretty, but it’s darn effective.