Always Be Prospecting
March 13th, 2007 by Megan Mahan
the old bait-and-switch.
But before I knew it,
she was handing me free samples and goody bags.
We’ve talked about ABC–or, Always Be Closing–here on the Agent Blog before. But yesterday afternoon as I stood in line at Kinko’s, I got a lesson in ABP–Always Be Prospecting.
Standing in the inert line at Kinko’s, the woman in front of me started making what I thought was idle conversation, finally saying, “You have great skin. What do you use on it?”
What a compliment! So I spilled my daily skin regimen–product names, everything.
Then, as she was pouring over my pores, she said:
“I’d love to give you my card. I’m a Mary Kay representative and I think you’d really love our products.”
Admittedly, I felt like I’d just gotten the old bait-and-switch. But before I knew it, the woman–Dianne–was handing me free samples and goody bags, all of which she kept handy in her purse.
“Would you be interested in attending a Mary Kay makeover party?” she asked.
I responded with an honest “No.” I did that once in college with a bunch of co-workers; I walked out of that place looking like, well… you get the idea.
“Would you be interested in selling Mary Kay products?”
Again, I told her no. And I was starting to get a tad uncomfortable. But, for blogging purposes, I let her keep on.
“Okay, that’s fine. Why don’t you give me your business card so I can follow up with you next week?”
A-ha. The assumptive close. Valiant effort, but I wasn’t comfortable giving my contact information to a perfect stranger I just happened upon in a Kinko’s line (which still wasn’t moving, by the way.) As it turns out, I’m pretty bad about keeping business cards on me, so I didn’t have to fib to get out of giving her my info.
“Well, my business card is in your goody bag so give me a call next week if you want, and be sure to check out my web site. You can order anything right online.”
Now that I can handle. Put the ball in my court. Let me call the shots.
I checked out her web site last night, and while I haven’t purchased anything yet, the fact that I bothered to look at her site at all should be considered a small win.
What tips should you take away from my encounter with Dianne?
- Use casual, genuine conversation to attain clues about the prospect’s buying habits and preferences.
- Keep it casual. I would have felt much better if Dianne wouldn’t have pushed me with questions about attending a make-up seminar or selling her products.
- Have swag on hand. Keeping a plethora of lip gloss samples probably won’t work for the average insurance agent, but a cool pen or goody bag holding your business card and a $5 Starbucks gift card will make the prospect feel spoiled and give the prospect a way to contact you.
- Be careful with the assumptive close. Prospects will be nice to you because their mothers have taught [most of] them the importance of being polite. But Dianne should have taken my “Nos” to heart instead of asking me for my contact information. Had I been more receptive to her offers, asking to follow up with me would have been perfectly acceptable.
- Get your [web] act together. I loved that she left me with her web site URL where I could look around all I wanted. Lucky for her it was a good-looking, easy-to-use web site, or I would have bailed within the first 10 seconds. Having a great web site will encourage me to stop back–which increases the chances that I’ll buy something.
There’s my two cents on the encounter. Leave yours via comments!
