I made a big mistake the other day. It wasted a significant amount of my time, could have cost me a deal and I was pretty angry with myself.
So why do you care? Well, you could be inadvertently doing exactly the same thing.
Let me tell you the story. There are some valuable lessons for any of you involved in any form of negotiations, marketing and selling.
It all started a couple of months ago.
As a reader of this newsletter, you know I offer a number of free white papers.
Someone ordered our “Official Guide to Maximising Your Trade Show Returns” report .
Once someone orders any of our material, they get a series of automatic follow up emails – which go into more depth on the topic and essentially keep our name in front of them.
I also followed up with a phone call to touch base.
The gentleman involved told me that they exhibited at lots of tradeshows around the world and while they were good at it, thought I might be able to add value in terms of better marketing.
But he wasn’t one of the 2 owners and knew they’d have to be involved if any money was going to be spent.
They were coming up to Sydney for a tradeshow so he invited me to come and meet the owners while they were here. Date and time to be determined.
A couple of days before the show, I rang and arranged to go over on Monday. “Yup, that’s fine. John will be here and we can meet”.
So I rocked up to the show – found the stand and met my contact.
There were 2 people on the stand… he and the boss, John, who was talking to someone.
So I spent the next 10 minutes talking to my contact – asking him a bunch of questions about the market they target, the machinery, his background etc.
Time rolled on. John didn’t look like he’d be free any time soon. Then a couple of new customers turned up and my contact needed to talk to them.
So I said – “No problem – I’ll see who else is around and come back in 10”.
You starting to get a picture of what’s going wrong here?
I came back in 15 – to find John was sitting down and eating his lunch. I thought of approaching him directly, but someone beat me to it.
My guy was still with his new clients.
John gets up and walks into the stand. I walk up and introduce myself.
“Can I help you?” “Do you know who I am?” “No” “Didn’t your chap tell you I’m coming and why?”
John had no idea who I was, and why I was there. My contact hadn’t bothered to brief him.
Basically John told me it was a really bad time – they were really busy – and he wanted be available to sell stuff, not see someone trying to sell him something.
And frankly, he was right. I don’t blame him at all.
While waiting all I had running through my head was, “Kotwal – you idiot! Positioning, Positioning, Positioning!”
I’d broken a couple of fundamental rules.
The first is I hadn’t done enough qualification on the phone. I hadn’t found out what my contact’s real position was and how much influence he had. I had assumed that John knew why I was coming and wanted to meet.
Nor had I insisted in doing some pre-qualification with John himself to see if it was worth meeting.
And the second major error was one of positioning.
There’s a major rule in marketing. Who calls whom has a huge bearing on your success.
I was the supplicant – not him! Big mistake.
I had no credibility with John. He knew nothing about me. He hadn’t read my stuff, talked to organisations I’d helped turn around. He didn’t think he had a problem.
I was coming from a position of weakness not strength. As such John had no respect for my time, or abilities. So why would he want to talk to me?
So what are the real lessons here?
First of all, value your time. I stopped “meeting for a coffee” years ago. Make sure you qualify, qualify, qualify BEFORE you spend time physically travelling to meet someone.
Yes, face to face is important – but the timing is crucial. In short - Don’t make yourself “too available”.
Second, make sure that the “edification” process occurs well before you meet. The prospect needs to know who you are, your expert status (achieved through your writing, testimonials, case studies and third party references) before meeting with you.
That way you command respect before you meet and they’re far more likely to take you seriously.
Senior doctors are prime examples of this. You wouldn’t expect a cold call from your doctor, would you? And when you do meet – their “credibility” is displayed on their walls with their degrees, and their whole manner.
They diagnose – and then they prescribe. And generally, most people take their medicine.
You should act the same way.
Rashid.
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