We all run into a lot of different people in our day-to-day business. After a while we get triggers as to how things might go. For example:
- When someone wants to dive deep on fees in the first call it means we will never work together. Never. Recently one guy brought up fees three times in a 15-minute introductory Zoom call with the last mention being a question about if I would take my fee in equity (in a company they haven’t bought, much less identified yet).
- I meet someone, I give them a copy of one of my books, we meet again or talk within a week, and they say they’ve finished my book and really liked it. Bottom line, 90% chance we’ll work together.
- If someone asks a lot of questions about how we work together, the process, timing, etc. it also means there’s a good chance we’ll work together. Being inquisitive means seriousness.
- On the flip side, if excuses start to flow and the message changes, guess what? (Especially for business buyers) they’ve changed their mind, i.e., they got cold feet, so they come up with alternatives like, “I might be getting a promotion” or “We have to decide where we want to live” or “My spouse isn’t sure this is the right time.”
I bet most of you reading this have similar “signs of action (or no action)” in your memory banks. After a while it gets easier to figure out who to concentrate on helping.
“Some things are just too coincidental to be a coincidence.” Yogi Berra
“We spend our time looking for security and hate it when we get it.” John Steinbeck
