“If you want more action in your business, you have to create it. You can’t just “build it and they will come”, or connect with someone on LinkedIn and be satisfied. You have to work.”
I’ve worked with a ton of businesses over the years. If I had to take a legit stab it would be several thousand. Anything from multi-million dollar firms to the new idea folkz out there. Some of them think that they’ll become a millionaire just because their website looks pretty. And that’s simply not the case.
We all have goals in mind. We have to take a series of mini steps to accomplish them. Most people love meeting with people to exchange stories and ideas. But this takes up a lot of time, and is it really effective from a time and cost perspective? Let’s do the math.
Let’s say your day consists of a full day of meetings, one hour each. 2 of which are meals, and 2 are coffee. Let’s say you bill at $50/hour in your industry, which would equal $400 daily.
So each meeting is then worth $50/hour, + an average $5 for meals, + travel and wear and tear on your body. All this, and have you even curated or verified the people you meet with? Do you qualify a meeting before you have one?
Most people don’t.
What if there was a way to not only verify, but also to talk with the prospects, learn from them, and funnel them down at a number you never thought imaginable.
Let’s remove the “who are you” and all the small talk that comes with these meetings, and focus exclusively on solving pain points. I was recently at home one Friday night, after 8pm, and thought to myself how I hear our companies talk about how difficult it is to get in front of new people.
So I decided to create an exercise that allowed me to have a lot of rapid meetings back to back, and learn what is really keeping folks up at night. I did this by taking an inventory of my LinkedIn account, and reached out to the first 8 people I interacted with. Could be a message, a like, or a connection.
I reached out to these people and asked if we could have a quick 10 min chat on Monday morning, and what is the best number to call you at. (10:10, 10:20, 10:30, etc.) Within 30 minutes, 7 of the 8 people had responded and scheduled a call.
FFW to Monday, no one at the office thought it would go smoothly. I proved them wrong. I focused on learning about them. No small talk, no beat around the bush, no “how was your weekend”, just “what is keeping you up at night?’
I learned a lot, and took 2 full pages of notes from 7 calls, with an action plan with what I could to provide them afterwards to remedy their pain points.
An example is an eBook that we already had produced, but neither party knew they needed it.
If no one knows that you have their answer, it doesn’t matter how pretty your website is. It’s about getting in front of people and learning quickly. By noon on Monday, I felt my test was complete, and I could accomplish a ton by having a “speed dating” style sessions. So I set out to an even bigger challenge…
Could I do 50 calls a day at ten minutes each?
I posted on Facebook, and told my network what I was doing, and asked if anyone wanted to schedule a quick talk. This post got a lot of likes and comments, but only 3 signups.
Don’t confuse likes and comments for signups. Signups are the only conversion, or the piece of data that we are tracking. So 3 signups is good, but its not enough, I still need 47 to reach my goal. Here’s exactly what the form looks like:
Short, sweet, and to the point. I qualified these contacts by starting the form with “I want to talk business” and I want to learn about them. I’m not selling at all. I’m not trying to f@#* on the first date. I’m trying to learn about their pain points, what is keeping them up at night.
Since Friday night worked for me before, I decided to leverage an existing email list of 600+ people and sent them this exact message, starting at 8:45pm. I converted 18 from the email to a phone call scheduled for Monday or Wednesday morning. I then spent 20 minutes on Saturday working on the exact schedule, I then sent each person a confirmation message that looked like this, confirming the meetings.
I set out for the adventure on Monday and Wednesday mornings ready to get my learn on. And again taking PAGES of notes learning about what these people are going through.
For some I had direct answers for them. But for others I had to create new content, or make introductions, or do more research for. With every single call, I had something tangible to provide in the coming days. I did 25 calls in 2 days. In less that 4 total hours.
I gathered more useful information from these 4 hours than I could have gotten in 40 hours of my previous approach to meetings. We need to focus on more PRODUCTIVE meetings, rather that having meetings just to have meetings, trying to hit a quota like a cop is at the end of the month. Quality AND Quantity.
So now, Introducing, the 50 Ten Challenge.
50 qualified calls, for ten minutes each. Can you do it?
By the way, I do want to talk to you too 
Join me here.
I want to hear your results, email me [email protected], or online use #50ten