The Client Letter
December 12, 2012
Sedona, Arizona
Sunny 50 Degrees
Got an interesting email this morning from someone with a quick question.
Basically, the gist of it was that this person’s prospective client wanted some work done prior to paying him.
I guess they wanted to get a taste of what the service provider could do.
He was asking me what to do…
I gave him my suggestion to send something to the effect of, “Homey don’t play dat.” Well, I recommended the polite version of it anyway.
There are a few things to keep in mind here:
1. At any one moment in time, you either have a client or you don’t. You can tell who your clients are because they’ve paid you money.
Everyone else is just a possibility. So when you get the promise of more work if you’ll just… ignore it. The promise of referrals? Ignore those too.
Ignore any future “promise” of any kind.
If we lived in the future that might be helpful, but we’re living in the now baby… in the now.
2. Money is either in your possession or it is not. There is no in between. There is no such thing as “it’s coming,” so you may as well ban that one from your realm of possibility. You’ll save yourself a lot of heartache. I’ve made a fool out of myself by falling for this one many times. I was the inspiration for this video, which you should probably watch every now and again.
Now I’m guessing here (and Mr. Mystery can let me know) that this exchange was via email.
Because this type of thing reminds me of what can happen when your relationship with a potential client is NOT strong enough to set you apart from all of their other options.
To be blunt, you don’t get this crap when someone respects you as a professional. That requires a relationship of some kind. (Which can be created via your marketing by the way.)
In general, you build relationships on the phone. You sell on the phone.
If you are not getting on the phone with your prospects, you are going to sink yourself.
Get this, learn the secrets for selling on the phone and watch what happens. Don’t put this off.
You know if you need it or not.