How To Do You Start A Conversation With a Client

So a few years ago, I was watching a talk from Conor Neil, you know the TEDx speaker, and He said something.

He said something that had me, you know, has been on my mind ever since. And I'm going to go into what he said in a minute, but before we get into that, I want to welcome you and join me.

Thank you for joining me on this episode for the virtual entrepreneur. If you're new, I am your host, Herbert innocent and today I want to finalise on what we had been talking the entire week, which is fantastic, customers and where to find them. So our goal has been to understand, fantastic customers, where we can find them.

And he on our previous episode when we looked at was, you know where to find your ideal clients, and before that we looked at how to position yourself so if you haven't heard any of those stuff.

I want you to go back and listen to those, and then come back and, oh, this will make so much sense. But, that said, today you're going to jump in and I want to talk to you about something that is more important and more powerful than knowing where your ideal clients is, then even positioning yourself as an expert, right, something that is much more fundamental. And I was talking to, I be talking to a lot of experts actually lately, and some of the things that I've been learning has been mind boggling right it's not always about, you know, the quickest results or the biggest numbers first. So, with that said, today I wanted to focus on how do you start a conversation with your prospect client.

Now I'm not going to go into the details of how we're going to do that. Right, but I wanted to give you a very specific mindset that I am seeing experts are recommending, and they're using and they're saying, this is the best approach, and the results speak for themselves. So, one of the best thing that I've seen, that I'm seeing is, you can find your ideal clients you will have them right in front of you. Right. but if you can't get them to engage with you, you've lost them, and a very good example of this was, uh, you know when, when thinking back when I was, you know, in, in the university, I remember, you know, the professor will be standing in front of us, and they will have us, they'll have all the students there like 300 of them, maybe even 500 of them 500 of them.

And the professor will have that attention of those 500 students, for 15 minutes to an hour. You know, sometimes two hours, all that attention.

But sorry, the professor will have the students for all that time, you'll have them for up to two hours, three hours sometimes. However, having the students there and having the attention are two very different things. And I'll tell you why.

I remember one time, the professor will get down and start talking, you know, giving the presentation, and then I'll look around, and the students will either be laying with their heads down on the desk, fallen asleep. Oh, they'll all be looking down at their smartphones or their computers, you can see them enjoying, you know, whatever it is that they're watching which is not the lecture notes you can tell from the lecture notes because they're smiling, they're giggling they're talking, Right. And the professor is busy lecturing. Right.

And so, even though the professor has the students with him in a room, a very significant, you know, time to make a instil information that could really transform someone that you know, having them there, did not mean that he had the students attention. Right. And they remember.

So, when I learned this when I saw this, it was mind. It was mind-boggling because it was very different from how school was, you know, because when in school. The teacher didn't have the, the attention of the students. She would stop.

She would stop and try and regain that attention, because it was critical to her performance. Right. And so here I wanted to highlight the difference between having someone, and having their attention. And so, when I was watching Neil's talk, this is what I learned this is where I've come to understand how you start a conversation really matters and if a conversation is gonna result in a sale, it's even more important because people do not want to spend on things they don't want. They did not want their time wasted.

And I remember learning from what Neil was talking about.

Every time I had the opportunity to present in front of the class, I will do one thing.

My presentation despite being on the subject that we were talking about. I would try and take an approach that is so close to the edge that will guarantee me that every time I stood there, all the students will literally not be able to look away from me. And that was the biggest learning I ever learn, right. It was the biggest wake up call, in terms of the difference between having someone there and having someone's attention, right. And what he said was, how you start a presentation matters.

Now if you don't have a new, new has a lot of videos, and he's a TEDx, He's a TEDx speaker and I haven't had the opportunity to dig deep into his background, but one of the things that I know is that he teaches in his classes. You know I think it's a.

What do you call those, I think it's a, I don't know if it's lecture notes, or what do you call those masterclasses where he explains and teaches how to present how to give a speech. Right. And one of the biggest thing that he emphasize, is how do you start and how do you finish.

And here's why that's important, how you start determines who gets the attention, and how you finish determines if you're going to get them take action.

And so basically how you finish may not matter as much, if you build up the emotions in the middle and all those things, there's all this credit. That happens in the middle, but one of the biggest thing that I'm seeing is how you start is the most fundamental way.

And what that means for today is the last puzzle of positioning yourself as an expert so we can get to our customer. We already know who they are. We already know where they are. Our clients are, You know, whether they're searching for solution, or they're socialising. The next thing becomes, how do we get their attention, and how we go about doing that is really really important. And I had a talk with Brynne Tillman, the CEO of LinkedIn.

And one of the things that I learned from her was, it's not always about trying to send as many links, and messages to everyone as much as you want, right. It's not always about just trying to reach out reach out email email. It's not always about that.

Sometimes it's just about talking, not so much about anything else that you want to sell them, or you want to show them this blog if it's not yours. It's just about talking to them and asking them, you know, for the permission, and giving them the opportunity to communicate to engage, to interact. Anyway, we'll get in touch later with how all these other details, as I have several guests lining up at coming up so if you keep an eye on that.

Aside from that, the call to action for today, which is what I want you to do for today is, decide how you're going to start with your first prospect, or your second prospect or your third prospect and how you start will determine if they'll give you their attention. So, that is me. On this episode of the virtual entrepreneur, I hope you enjoyed and got value from that. If you did, thank you so much for joining in, and subscribe to this podcast from whatever channel you're listening to.

And as always, I will talk to you on our next episode of the virtual entrepreneur, And as always, Have a wonderful evening.