The Client Letter
July 24, 2012
Sedona, Arizona
Cloudy 67 degrees
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Did you ever think your prospect would tell you exactly what you need to know to “close the deal?” Believe it. This will teach you how to do it.
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Sometimes I chuckle when I’m reminded just how much adult life is like high school.
You have your cool kids, the people everyone wants to be around. Then you have the outcasts that no one understands. In the middle are a sea of drifters that go wherever conditions are best.
If they have access to the cool kids, they’ll do their best to hang out with them. If no one cool is around, they’re fine hanging out with the weirdos. As long as no one cool sees them.
Basic human dynamics seem to extend from childhood, through adolescence straight into adulthood. It’s the same game, we just get older.
The universal quality liked by no one is need. If you’re needy or clingy, you repel people as though you had the plague.
I have no idea if this is how we’re wired as humans or if this is just how we’ve conditioned ourselves to act over the years.
It doesn’t really matter. It just is what it is. Fight it or use it.
This bit of knowledge is extremely powerful in the client business, provided you use it correctly.
Let’s take the concept of a free consultation as an example.
From your perspective, you might think that offering a “free consultation” is generous. That giving out “free advice” is something that should attract the clients in droves.
Except it doesn’t.
The problem isn’t even the free part, even though that isn’t the most interesting presentation in the world. The problem is really the package that the free is in. The problem is how that package is received and perceived by your prospects.
Without believable and authentic scarcity, your offers will lack the magnetic force required to attract people TO you.
There’s a big difference between offering “free consultations” and offering 4 complimentary sessions on Thursday of each week.
That first way sends the message, “I’m around… you just call when you need me… I’ll be here for you… just waiting… you can call… you know, if you want.”
The second way sends a message more like, “I’m happy to provide value to the marketplace. But if you want what I have, you have to come and get it. And here are the rules for doing that.”
Which do you think brings better clients?