As you know I’m doing a new business now that it involves sales and recruitment. Ok, test time –
-what is the first thing they tell you to do when you go into sales?
[guessing…..guessing….. hmm, let me seeeeeee..... Oh! I know! Call all your friends!]
Right, call your friends because they are your warm market. Are you wondering what “warm market” is? Well, let’s go to our standby Wikipedia and see what they say:
Warm market is used both the sales and direct marketing industries. In direct marketing it is similar to using the phrase “permission marketing“, which is also the title of a best selling book by Seth Godin. In sales and direct marketing your warm market is said to be people you know, which could be friends, relatives and existing customers, even referrals are said to be warm (see referral marketing.)
So, guess who has been doing that? Yes, me. Which, really isn’t such a bad thing as I get to be sociable, promote and catch up with friends I haven’t seen in awhile. Gosh, what more could I ask for? Not only am I working, I’m also seeing my friends!
Today, I finished my landscaping job, came home, took a shower, ate lunch and started prospecting. I texted a friend I had been chasing for a year to get together and have a drink. Somehow, I was able to pull off her meeting me for such drink and talk to her about joining my team -all from texting. [It kinda blew my mind]
Not only did we catch up, I think she’s going to come to an open house and join my team. We’ll, see….for every 100 people you get to an open house guess how many you get to join you? 10. Out of those 10 you may only get 1 who makes it to regional VP. Yes, a numbers game and not personal.
Recently, I was trying to get in touch with a woman whom I did some work with who has been laid off for quite some time. I contacted her old boss who I interviewed with earlier in my layoff status and asked how to get in touch with her and he told me to find her on LinkedIn. So, I signed up for an account. As I’m going through the registration process it linked to my yahoo email contact list and sent out an invitation to join to everyone including –
-every girl I’ve dated since the year 2000
-all my old bosses including the one who recently laid me off
- my financial advisor/ex gf who probably wasn’t happy to learn that I’d joined the financial industry and was probably going to yank all my $ out of her company soon
- various people who I have no.idea. who they are and how their email addresses got into my contact list
Yeah.
As I realized this I closed out my email and logged off the computer and swore I wasn’t going to freak out or have an anxiety attack over it. In fact, I was kind of amused at the amount of people who accepted my invitation to join my network.
Including the most recent boss that laid me off.