Pay-off: immediately and easily actionable way to maximise future sales
Investment: < 2 mins
Reaching out to new people, creating new conversations and building mutual trusted relationships effectively and consistently is hard.
Uncomfortable.
Scary even.
I know this because the nice, professional, polished, intelligent people I work with each day tell me this.
Well, they don’t tell me straight, obviously. I didn’t say they were 100% honest with themselves. No, they tell me that they don’t have time to do it. Some genuinely believe it.
But of course they have time.
24 hours a day should do it. There are 1001 things they could re-arrange (or manage better?) either in their world around them or in their mind to create the time to do it.
But then they’d expose themselves to the real barrier – discomfort, fear – and the admission that it’s beating them. And no intelligent professional consultant wants to take on that fight when they can pick other fights that are easier to win! (After all, most pride themselves on getting things right, and winning).
(To learn 6 ways to reduce your fear of selling immediately, click here.)
How you can find the time AND reduce the fear to increase future sales (using investment advice!)
What’s interesting to me is the parallel here between investing your time in reaching out (whether cold calling, cold emailing, boldly walking up to new people, asking for referrals etc) and investing money.
Three simple rules about investing money are:
1) Start saving/investing now, no matter how small
2) Take the emotion out of investing
3) Invest consistently for the long term (drip, drip, drip..)
If you want to future-proof your career, develop more business and sales, and increase your chances not just in your career but life in general for your years ahead I suggest the same three rules for reaching out to new people to create value-based trustworthy conversations and eventually relationships.
Here’s how you could use the same three rules:
1) Start investing now, no matter how small.
How?
Make time for just one reach out per day (to build the habit and enjoy the ‘compound interest’.) What’s that, 5-10 minutes? You can find that time if you realise this is important. One a day. Drip, drip, drip…
2) Take the emotion out of it.
How?
By doing one a day. At one a day, the outcome is irrelevant. The only focus and promise is on the activity – one a day. That’s within your full control. And when you win, you still do one a day. And when you lose, you still do one a day. Got it? Drip, drip, drip…
3) Invest consistently for the long term.
How?
One a day is consistently do-able (and it gets easier as you build the muscle). That’s 5 per week, 20 per month, 250 per year, and it’s not linear – the ‘interest’ you get from the market and your network and the opportunities that arise compounds.
Investing consistently in reaching out earns you ‘compound market interest’. It pays off. Don’t get scared and bail. One new reach out preferably to a new person per day is surely a very wise investment.
Drip, drip, drip..
P.S. Excuse makers who say they are busy at client sites delivering – it’s even easier when you’re amongst people delivering! You’re not asking them to buy from you. You’re saying hi, starting conversations and being helpful.
