Get more clients during events by making them ask you this question — for small business owners, consultants and coaches

You will be surprised at how many small business owners, consultants and coaches lose clients because they answer wrong this simple question: so, what is your business about?

Most people think they have the right answer, but they don’t. That’s a big claim, but I would like to explain my line of thought and let you decide for yourself.

Let me guess here: when you created your pitch phrase you put some deep thought into answering the following questions:

1. -Which is the message I want to communicate?
2. -How do I show best what I do?

If you did that, and if you put extra thought into making the sentence you are now using small and memorable, I have bad news for you. I believe that you have been asking the wrong questions.

The most powerful way to build your pitch phrase to get more clients during events is to answer the following question first.

The question:

What reaction do I want to get? — and I am going to explain which response we have found extremely effective when you want to grab attention and convert prospects into clients.

Imagine you are in an event and a potential client asks you: so, what do you do?

The person who asked that question might or might not be interested in what you do. He might or might not care about what you are going to say. He might just make casual, polite conversation. If you respond with your usual phrase, the discussion will most probably remain superficial.

What you want is to get him curious, get him to ask you for more information. The reaction you want to get is a combination of surprise and curiosity. And this can be done using a specific technique:

An intriguing knowledge gap followed by a pause.

I will explain below, but let me give some definitions first:

• A knowledge gap is any gap between what the prospect hears and how you are achieving that with your work.
• What makes a knowledge gap intriguing? When what you do is extremely relevant to the prospect.
• Why a pause? Because of the reaction you want the person to have after you pause.

You want to create an intriguing knowledge gap and then pause.

I will give one example for you to understand how to use it in practice.

When I go to events and I meet small business owners/consultants/coaches (the market for which I have developed my services), and they ask me what I do, I say either of the following two sentences:

• -I help small business owners/consultants/coaches make money while sleeping.
• -I help small business owners/consultants/coaches get new clients almost automatically.

What both of those sentences have in common?

They both sparkle interest, they are both relevant, and they both lead 95% of the time to the same reaction:

A smile, a pause and a response: That’s interesting, how do you do that?

This is the response you want from a prospect. You want the prospect to ask you for more, to be curious, to give you his/her full attention. Now, if you want to know how a person can make money while being asleep or get clients almost automatically, I would suggest requesting access to the free trial of the course Getting Clients during Events. There you can also learn how to sell without selling (we -almost- all hate selling), how to spend less time in events while getting more clients, how to make prospects come to you during events and more.

One day I was delivering a course on how to get more clients through referrals for your business, when one of the participants who was an accountant said:

-Yeah, but this applies to professionals that do something interesting or life changing. How can I do it?

We ended up working with this accountant to refine his message. Now, when people ask him what he does he answers:

-I help clients become financially free.

I don’t need to explain why that works. Small business owners immediately ask him:

-Wow, how do you do that?

This lets him explain the different service packages he has developed that help people make more profit in their business while cutting losses.

For now, I want you to keep that in mind:

The response you want people to have after you give your catchphrase is:

-Interesting, how do you do that?

This gives you both the stage to explain and the full attention of the prospect. Now, you can explain in more details.

In the course Getting Clients during Events, you will be able to learn also how to follow up after they ask you to do so, in order to keep their attention and interest, and how to gracefully leave a conversation when you see it doesn’t lead anywhere.Give it a free test here.

So, what is your power sentence? I and my network would love to know what you help clients do!