Once you grasp this principle, your marketing efforts become fun.
It's not about you, the marketer. Nobody is interested in you (except your mom, maybe). Everyone is interested in himself/herself. So if you want people to listen to you, ask them about themselves.
It's funny what happens when you do this. When you focus on listening to the other person (with full concentration, not with a view to letting them finish so you can jump in with your own comments already), when the other person has done most of the talking about themselves, at the end of the conversation, they often tell you how good at conversations you are!
Another thing that happens is that the one who's been doing all the talking now becomes curious about you and asks you questions along the lines of 'so what do you do'?
This is not your cue to pitch your business though - more on this later. Right now your aim is to build rapport with the person, establish a relationship, discover what their needs and wants are, with a view to offering a possible solution. So when asked what you do, give your 'elevator speech' then go back to asking questions to learn more about the other person.
Marketing, when done properly, aims to establish win-win relationships with people. To succeed as a marketer in any type of business, you must always think in terms of what's best for the other person. Think of ways to arrive at 'win-win' situations. This means being open to the possibility that you may not be the one to provide the person's needs (in which case it helps to be a resource - if you can't help, refer them to someone who can. As surely as the Universal Laws stand, you will be well catered for if you think and act this way).
Notice how this principle applies in any relationship, business or personal.
Here's an article I wrote some years ago on this topic and here's a great little book that teaches you more about asking great questions:
It's not about you, the marketer. Nobody is interested in you (except your mom, maybe). Everyone is interested in himself/herself. So if you want people to listen to you, ask them about themselves.
It's funny what happens when you do this. When you focus on listening to the other person (with full concentration, not with a view to letting them finish so you can jump in with your own comments already), when the other person has done most of the talking about themselves, at the end of the conversation, they often tell you how good at conversations you are!
Another thing that happens is that the one who's been doing all the talking now becomes curious about you and asks you questions along the lines of 'so what do you do'?
This is not your cue to pitch your business though - more on this later. Right now your aim is to build rapport with the person, establish a relationship, discover what their needs and wants are, with a view to offering a possible solution. So when asked what you do, give your 'elevator speech' then go back to asking questions to learn more about the other person.
Marketing, when done properly, aims to establish win-win relationships with people. To succeed as a marketer in any type of business, you must always think in terms of what's best for the other person. Think of ways to arrive at 'win-win' situations. This means being open to the possibility that you may not be the one to provide the person's needs (in which case it helps to be a resource - if you can't help, refer them to someone who can. As surely as the Universal Laws stand, you will be well catered for if you think and act this way).
Notice how this principle applies in any relationship, business or personal.
Here's an article I wrote some years ago on this topic and here's a great little book that teaches you more about asking great questions:
No comments:
Post a Comment