Insights, Not Hype
Read time: 2 minutes
When I was 21, I used to do my uni reading in a nice cafe in the hipster district of Vienna.
After 7 p.m., the cafe would slowly mold into a bar, filling up with people (and cigarette smoke).
One day after a very long study session, my boyfriend came to join me for drinks, and as the bar was already full to the brim, two guys came to our huge table and asked to use the other seats.
Sure thing, they sat down, and it wasn’t long until we started having a conversation with them.
They were young, cool and funny. We bought a round, and they did too. We were having a good laugh, and of course, as in every flowing casual conversation, we started talking about what everyone does for a living.
When Andy, one of the guys, asked me what I do, I said: “I study statistics, particularly empirical research like designing and analyzing surveys, you know, for customer satisfaction and finding out what people want”.
His eyes lit up. He said, “I have an app, we’re drowning in user feedback and we have no idea how to plow through all that data. We need someone exactly like you”.
Rest assured, 3 days later I signed my first consulting contract in data.
Let’s break down what happened here.
Was this luck? Sure, it’s pure luck to find a qualified lead sitting at your table.
But you can totally recreate that setting, so let’s leave luck aside for a second and look at why I closed the sale:
I had no intention to pitch
There was trust built already
He’d already seen me as a person and had a laugh with me
How you can recreate this:
Start conversations without an agenda
Be nice, be fun, be yourself
If asked, say what you do and describe it well
I guarantee you, if your offer is relevant: you don’t even need to pitch. Because the other person will show interest organically.
What you can control is who you start these conversations with. Yes, this is called prospecting, it’s tedious and it’s trying to guess whether person X may need your service.
But even this doesn’t matter.
Because even if person X doesn’t need your service, you stay on top of their mind. And even if they never need you, someone they know may. If you make a good impression by being a cool human being, that’s a referral right there.
I’ve been talking about social selling a lot these days. Because most people seem to struggle with it.
And I have something huge coming on Monday next week.
Stay tuned on LinkedIn to find out what.
Until then — start more conversations without an agenda. You’ll never regret it.
Cheerio,
Dana
