Going on a “blind date” with customers

by Shadowmaster on 03/01/10 at 4:07 am

I have read a nice arti­cle that define meet­ing with cus­tomers as a blind date, the trans­la­tion is tend to be as much close to the original.

All credit are to Yaniv Zaid (linkedin page: http://il.linkedin.com/in/yanivzaid), owner and CEO of “The art of per­sua­sion”. Orig­i­nal arti­cle can be found at the­marker: http://cafe.themarker.com/view.php?t=1382261 .

First meet­ing with a cus­tomer that you have never met is very sim­i­lar to a blind-date – you don’t know the per­son and he doesn’t know you (even if you had the chance to talk over the phone or via email this doesn’t con­sider as know­ing), there is a small amount of time to make first impres­sion and you have to mar­ket your­self and be at your best. In both cases the meet­ing is essen­tial (and can be crit­ics) for your per­sonal or pro­fes­sional future. In spite of that, most of the businessmen/women are ready for a “date” but less ready for a “busi­ness date”, even tough that same rules applies for both when it comes for max­i­mal self-marketing (and max­i­mal mar­ket­ing of the ser­vice and/or the prod­uct you offer in case of “busi­ness date”).

What are the most impor­tant rules to trans­fer “busi­ness date” with a cus­tomer to more suc­cess­ful same as reg­u­lar “date”?

Firstly, pre­pare your­self good, the key for suc­cess is get­ting ready. The same way you get ready for a reg­u­lar “date” you have to do when it comes to a “busi­ness date”, as you need to think about the sub­ject that will be raised up and pre­pare to deal with them. For exam­ple, if (the “busi­ness date”) requires you have tech­ni­cal knowl­edge in spe­cific areas study them inside-out. Ask your­self what is the “added value”, skills , needs that the per­son you are going to meet excepts from you, what is the result that you wish to accom­plish and what’s the “bot­tom line” that you want to trans­fer to the other side. it’s also rec­om­mended to think about ques­tions you might be answered and what’s the proper answer for them.

Sec­ondly, expose “weak points”. Nobody is per­fect and every­one have weak points. It’s not rec­om­mended to widely dis­cuss with the other part about your weak points at the first meet­ing, but if there are exist­ing vis­i­ble “weak points” or appar­ent dis­ad­van­tage you’ll have to dis­cuss about it as needed (only if you’ll be required to do so by the other part). It’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize your “weak points” and to find a way to let your cus­tomer know about them, so your cus­tomer will under­stand that you can over­come them and on the other hand to show them as part of your advantages.

Thirdly, keep­ing proper “dress code” at “busi­ness dates”. The way we dress influ­ence the image that we trans­fer out­side, and it doesn’t mat­ter what date we are attend­ing – busi­ness or reg­u­lar. Our clothes might trans­fer the image but it’s also set­ting our image in the cus­tomer eyes, and that is even before we open out mouth to speak. I’m not going to tell you what to wear as each indi­vid­ual has his own fash­ion taste, but it’s rec­om­mended to wear a dress code as it is known in the forum you are going to meet. In any­way keep your clothes clean and tidy.

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