If you have business development responsibilities, it’s easy to find yourself in a summer lull. Vacations, more casual business agendas and an “I need a breather” attitude may mean that your sales efforts take the proverbial “Summer Slide.” Don’t let your results for the year, take a nosedive now. Instead, implement these three counterintuitive strategies to boost your activity and have fun doing it.
1. Go To Lunch And Don’t Talk Business
You need to eat. Your clients need to eat. Why not do it together? As you head into the next three months, how about having at least one lunch a week with clients, prospects or referral partners? I know what you’re thinking. That doesn’t sound very counterintuitive, so here’s the catch. Do NOT talk about business. In fact, you should do your best to steer clear of business talk.
I know, it will probably come up. But you don’t have to be the one that initiates or perpetuates it. That’s not to say that if your client has business-related questions, you shouldn’t answer them. You should.
But make your primary focus on getting to know your client. For starters, now is the perfect time to talk about summer plans with the family or impending vacations. Let the conversation meander to areas where you share common interests and let the magic happen without any pressure to turn the conversation to business.
2. Take A Hike
It doesn’t have to be a hike, but it could be. It could be a jog, an evening at the ballpark, a day at the river or a Saturday morning at the local Farmer’s Market. The idea is to do something that you love. But just like going to lunch, you don’t do it alone. There is bound to be at least one person amongst your business contacts that would sincerely appreciate an invitation to join you for a little outing. It may be a family outing with your respective families or it could just be the two of you.
The concept is the same as above; your intent is not to get into some heady business discussion. Simply share time together doing something that you both will enjoy.
Instead of doing this once a week, how about doing this just once a month? Every month. I have clients that I run with. Others that I paint with and go to art openings with and still others that I reach out to for a fun day at the river. The lesson here is to cultivate relationships outside of the typical business lunch or meeting to really connect with others at a deeper and more personal level.
3. Stop Selling
Although few people want to be “that pushy salesperson,” when we put on our marketing or business development hat, our ulterior motives often become apparent. That means that despite our best efforts to the contrary, we can easily come across as just another marketer pushing our wares.
One of the cornerstones of Sales Magnetism, which I created and have taught to thousands over the last decade, is when you’re in a selling situation, your goal is NOT to make the sale. Counterintuitive, right?
When you go into a conversation or a meeting with the intention to sell, it’s difficult to have anything on your agenda but moving the prospect along the sales path that will get you your ideal outcome. And the prospect can sense your intentions. And he or she will feel the subtle (or not so subtle) pressure that you exert as you ask questions or pitch your services.
What if, instead, your goal was to “seek the truth.” The only way to do this authentically is to detach yourself from your “desired” outcome. In other words, you need to let the chips fall where they fall.
In the practice of Buddhism, this is called non-attachment. In a presentation at Harvard, The Dalai Lama said, “Attachment is the origin, the root of suffering; hence it is the cause of suffering.”
The problem that we have when we put on our business development hat is that we so want to control the outcome, because we “desire” to make the sale. In other words, we have an attachment to our outcome. So our very lopsided interests can get easily convoluted into us thinking that we are the best and perhaps the only viable option for our prospect. Our ego takes over. We want to be right and we want to win. The issue with this scenario is that there is often a loser.
So what if you let go of any preconceived “desire” and simply have an honest and thoughtful dialogue with your prospect to understand what is important to them and why?
I recently had a lunch meeting with a prospect and by practicing the above, I not only got him as a new coaching client, he hired me to work with his team as well. He had talked to other coaches, but “it didn’t feel right.” My guess is that the other coaches were too busy promoting why they were the best choice, talking about all of their great services and not focusing on understanding what my new client truly wanted. I, on the other hand, focused on what was important to him and connecting with him on a deeper emotional level. In other words, I detached myself from any preconceived outcome and simply let our conversation be about his truth.
In all three of these unconventional strategies to drive sales, there are a few common threads worth noting:
- Focus on building and nurturing real authentic relationships with others that are fortified with trust and genuine interest.
- Be of service. Go into any situation, particularly any business development or sales situation with the goal of being helpful – truly helpful. Helpful in a way that bypasses your ego, lets go of attachment and shows a genuine concern for what is going to best serve the other person.
- Don’t be a typical salesperson. Take off your business development hat and just be someone that others want to spend time with. And you do that by focusing on others and being the type of person that others want to call a friend.
The bottom-line is that people like to do business with other people that they like and trust. They want to know that you have their back and that you care. Be that kind of person and you will see your sales skyrocket.
