It often surprises me that the people I coach or am friendly with don’t have a roll off the tongue summary of what they do which is boiled down into an under 30 second sound bite and which will get people interested in hearing more about what they do.  I’ll ask them what they do and they stammer and stutter and then just blurt out something.

If you are totally engaged in your business and marketing offline and online you really have to have a coherent, relevant, quick summary of why someone should want to talk to you, what it is that you do and how it benefits your customers.

While working for Chet Holmes, worldwide respected marketing guru, and author of The Ultimate Sales Machine, I learned some incredible statistics which blew me away and showed me why most people don’t succeed.

At any given time only 3% of your prospects are currently in the market to buy your product or service and looking right now to get it. Another 6-7% are open to it, but not currently looking. The other 90% are divided into three nearly equal categories:
A) Not really thinking about right now.
B) Think they’re not interested (but might be, if you were good at presenting to them.)
C) They KNOW they’re not interested.”

If you understand these statistics, then you must stop trying to engage just the 3% actively looking and the 6-7% who are open to hearing more.  It’s truly like trying to find a needle in the haystack.  Your marketing needs to attract to you as many people as possible in the other 90%.  This will develop a long term pipeline and get you more referrals.  You have to find a way to engage this 90% who think they are happy with their current solution or feel they don’t have time to evaluate what you are selling. And you have to have an automated way to follow-up with them to maintain TOMA.

I’ve discussed previously how you can do this with your Direct Mail efforts.  On the phone or via e-mail, it starts with a compelling AMD or SAV.  See my recent post on Attraction Through Education.

Face to face, it’s all about your elevator pitch.  As with the other efforts, it starts with you really taking an interest in educating your prospects.  As Tony Robbins would say, “Successful people ask better questions”.  So when networking you need to ask better questions and really take an interest in the people you meet. Your goal should be to speak with everyone at an event briefly and to start to build some rapport but more importantly get them to want to speak with you again at a later date.  Too many people make the mistake of speaking with the same person at a networking event for way too long.  If done right, you’ll be able to follow-up with just about everyone in the room.

A good friend of mine, David Emil Lombard, who is a master networker has some really great questions to ask people at a networking event which proves that you are their to truly try to help others, and include:

• What is your favorite thing about what you do? What do you love about it?
• If I were speaking to somebody, how would I know if they are a good potential client or strategic alliance for you?
• So who are you seeking to connect with here tonight?

Once you have really proven that you are interested in them you should offer to teach them something of value to themselves and which have them saying “Wow, I didn’t know that!!!”.  It’s hard for sure, but with some research, easy to do.

Even many of the people I know who have some kind of elevator pitch down, they still err by selling themselves or using verbage that just doesn’t engage the other person and get them excited about knowing you and wanting to work with you.

They’ll use something like “I’m a financial planner for a world class organization who helps families to save more money and better prepare for the future” or “I’m a local real estate agent who helps people to sell their homes for more money than if they do it themselves” or “I’m an online marketer who sells Health and Beauty Products and who helps people to earn an incredible passive income online”.  You know, basically the same thing that all of their competition is saying.

What’s important is to differentiate yourself from your competition, to become more credible, and ultimately become THE authority in your field.

Does this sound better:  “I’m the author of the book The Five Biggest Mistakes Families Make in Investing In the Future and How Avoiding these Mistakes Will Put them in a Better Position to Retire Earlier and With More Money.  My passion is educating people on how to steer clear of the conventional wisdom strategies which will only have them losing their money faster than they ever imagined and making their broker rich in the meantime.  Did you realize that 90% of all people invested in the stock market lost over half of their savings in the last few years?”  Or “I’m a local real estate agent and the author of the soon to be released book The A to Z toolkit on Selling your Home for More Money.  As opposed to the over 50% of people who sold their homes at a loss last year, my customers made money.  You know, I’m interviewing people now to gain more data for my book and would love to interview you.”

Aren’t these guys who you would want to talk to more even if you have a broker or agent which you thought you were happy with??  Or even if you weren’t actively selling your home now??  I think so….See these guys have gained instant credibility and are planting seeds with the 90% of people who believe they are happy with their current broker or agent and who wouldn’t readily want to meet with someone else to discuss their investments.  However, who wouldn’t want to hear more from the author of a book who is offering to teach something of value???

Now I know that not many people out there are authors of a book.  If you want to learn strategies such as how to become an author, discover how to become THE authority in your field, become skilled at creating events to speak to numerous people at the same time, build automated systems to continuously market to your list, and get others to pay for your marketing efforts, then you must join me and Gerry Robert, author of the bestseller The Millionaire Mindset in our incredible new program The MissingLink……