(I'm editing this article to first highlight the points that can relate to coaches; follow that up by reading Dan Jourdan's blog post)
1. Smile at strangers and say good morning even if you don’t feel like it. If you act friendly and approachable you will become that way.
2. Always be on the look out to meet more people. Your database of contacts will be your most important asset and will be your road to making your fortune.
3. Be prepared with standard opening lines to start a conversation. Somehow poke fun at yourself and be prepared to laugh if people join in at your expense.
Shakespeare wrote once that “All the world is a stage and we are merely players”. It may have been the rock band “Rush” who said it that way in 1981 but the point is made. We are social creatures and communication is for enjoyment as much as it is necessity. Use your opportunities to meet people even if it means having some strangers on an elevator laugh at you once in a while. Remember, it’s not who you know, but who knows you!
Most people put their head down or look up at the numbers, which one are you? There is of course the option of being the guy that talks loudly on his cell phone, but nobody would admit to that one. Me, as soon as the bell rings, I am on stage. I figure as long as I have been selling I have been taught to have an elevator speech, a 30 second description of what you do and how you do it. Why not use it in the most obvious place?
The other day I was on the elevator going to the seventeenth floor of the building for a breakfast meeting. There were five other people with me. The doors shut, and…show time. I gave my standard opening line to the audience, the same one I used for the first sentence of this article. Judging by the smiles I then decide which group to begin a conversation with. If you are not smiling now, I probably would not be talking to you.
In this case I got three smiles, one texting on their phone and one person with I-Pod on and earplugs in, both in their own world at the moment. The brief conversation went well with people offering pleasantries as they were exiting the elevator. One gentleman who I was talking to stayed for the entire ride to the Seventeenth floor with me. When we decided to exchange business cards, you guessed it; this was the guy I was to meet for the breakfast meeting.
The meeting went well and I made the sale, not because of any sales tactic or system. I made the sale because I was having a good time on an elevator and made a friend and a good first impression with a person just for the fun of it. How many opportunities like this do you have every day that you are not taking advantage of?
Dan Jourdan – Managing Partner at Neighborhood Business Brokers and Gitomer Certified Speaker
