02nd Dec 2011 - Enjoy The Client Visit
You have earned enough respect from someone that they are willing to give up an hour of their day, bring you into their office to see what they are all about and have given you the opportunity to tell them why you want to charge a shockingly large fee for a human being…you couldn’t ask for a better platform.
There is something I love about going to see a client, you get out of the office, wander around a nice part of town (normally) and in most cases get the opportunity to talk to a colleague socially in hours you normally wouldn’t in the office. You then get to show someone why they should invest more time in you, recruit through you or “yes please” pay me now and then I will recruit for you!
Over time you naturally get better at pitching to clients in person and also improve your ability to gage what approach they would like best. One thing that is abundantly clear to me is that, the more normal you are, the better the meeting will be. There is nothing worse then a stuffy meeting where no one knows whether to laugh…or cough and move on if someone remotely hints at ‘light-hearted’…God forbid this meeting should be enjoyable.
Obviously there are times when the client is such a scrooge with their personality that a twitch on one side of their lip is seen as progress, so you go for a hard nosed pitch and hope for the best. However, if I have managed to get on their personality level within a couple of minuets, made a joke about myself, reminded them I’m just a human being rather then a robot I think it makes the client feel relaxed and the good fervour will generally be returned.
The level of friendliness I generally aim for within two minuets is that of meeting your best friends new girlfriend, you’re already open to getting on very well with them, almost want to, but they still have the potential to get black marked!
If you’re the one closing the meeting, the client is coming for a beer the next week to discuss progress and you have seen the stains on their smiling teeth indicating how much coffee they had that morning, you know you have built a bit of rapport.
The secret to achieving this 95% of the time is something we do normally every day, start by being relaxed and smiling… if they are playing on their blackberry as you are talking… its probably not going that well, throw caution to the wind and remind them that they poo too, at least you will smile on the way back to the office.
