Did you ever give serious thought to the impression you make when approaching a prospect?
I mean, we’ve all heard that it can take as little as a few seconds to make a good first impression. No revelation there. Right?
How about a bad first impression? How long does it take to undo one of those bad boys?
There are some practices that I see in hunting new prospects that I think make for a poor first impression. Mostly because they are rather deceptive in nature.
Such as:
Putting a “Re” in front of the subject in the subject line to imply we’ve corresponded. On one hand, I’ll admit that it gets attention, but its at the price of your integrity. I mean, we’re not committing some horrific sin here but as my good friend Tupac once said “Don’t come up in my kitchen with that weak a$$ sh*t”
Telling a “gatekeeper” “she’s expecting my call” or “she knows what this is in reference too” when that isn’t the case. Do you find a strong correlation between using that monkey style kung fu and people hanging up on you? I can’t see someone saying “I love people who lie to my assistant. Where can I mail my blank check?
Note: So if we make a habit of tricking the assistant and for some reason we get the account . . . could their inevitable resentment towards us make a lousy working relationship? We usually need to deal with assistants once our contact is a client. Right? Good luck with that one!
Leaving a voice mail for a prospect that implies you know each other and you’re old buds. Now honestly dude, do you really think you are the first person to ever try that? I would endorse burping your voice mail before that one. Unless of course, you take it up a notch by burping another lie. I’ve had people burp lies to me and it isn’t fun!
Using the name of a mutual friend with a level of urgency that you and the prospect talk ASAP. The prospect gets on the phone and you launch into to “pitch” mode. As someone who was recently on the receiving end of one of those, I can tell you that my response wasn’t very “gentlemanly”
Telling someone that you spoke or have corresponded when you both know you haven’t.
Pretending you are interested in their product, service, work they have published etc when you are using that to immediately transition into “buy from me” mode.
So get creative with your prospecting, find ways to be more compelling but don’t ever let some short term deception jeopardize your long term credibility.
We’re all so much better than that!
