Discussion: June 8, 2010 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter
A reader asks How to Say It:
Even before the recession, it seems like we entered an era of de-jobbing, more short-term work, freelancing and self-employment. I wonder if many of us would be better off staking ourselves through self-employment. Most job growth is in small business. I wonder if more people worked for themselves, if that might help create a bigger economic pie, if that would be better not just for the self-employed individuals, but for the economy as a whole, leading to more employment overall.
And your methods would be employed for the self-employed to get customers. So here’s my How to Say It question: How could I apply Ask The Headhunter methods to convince prospects to become my customers?
You just made my day. This is so tempting for me to answer… that I’m not going to do it.
Let’s start with some input from the crowd! How would you use the job hunting methods we discuss here to instead land some customers for your own new business (whatever that might be)? Is that even possible?
.
You’re going to re-read all Ask The Headhunters advise on networking, & apply it to long cycle sales.
Long cycle because you’d be advised to remember the part of networking about helping others.
You’ll want to apply “you-scratch-my-back-& -I’ll-scratch-yours” to developing your business. Target potential customers, make it your business to understand their business, and work at developing win/win/win scenarious. Be an advocate of your potential customers/network where you can. connect people in your network to others in a way that adds value to either one or preferably both of them, where you’re the missing link/piece to their deals. Ideally they win, you win, and the other party wins. The way to get to win/win/win may be only win/win where your win isn’t explicit at first, its silent/implicit an atta boy so to speak. You’ll find yourself becoming the go-to-guy and that means you’re informed, and as they say, knowledge is power/good for business
That’s why I say long cycle. it takes time, but gains momentum as your network starts doing likewise for you.
It’s not unlikely that you can walk in the door and sell up front, but as you can guess I believe in long cycle selling which relies on solid relationships, and buidling them takes time and patience and reciprocitiy