“Elevator pitches” are one of the more traditional approaches to lead generation, even though many business people seem to go horribly wrong with them.
Following is a variation on the theme from Jeffrey Hayzlett (http://amzn.to/HayzAmaz) which I love; in fact I’ve even started to use it myself.
I’ve changed his language a little as his example was in a cold call environment (it’s 15 years since my last cold call!) and Jeffrey used this approach once he had the guy on the phone interested.
I believe it is better used as an ‘Elevator’ at a social event, as it can get you what you really want: the meeting.
In this example the prospect and I have talked for a few minutes. We’ve exchanged some chitchat and built some rapport; I’ve also asked him what he does and know he is a prospect.
The rest of the conversation might go something like this:
“So, what about you, what do you do?”
“Hey, this is a wedding! Let me ask you another question—are you an early morning or afternoon person?”
“Morning”
“OK, so do you start the day with coffee, tea or juice?”
“Coffee”
“What coffee do you normally buy?”
“A large Flat White (OK, for you foreigners, in Australia that means an Espresso made with lots of milk)”
“Bagels, croissants or muffins?”
“Love croissants, shouldn’t though!”
“Great, how about we have a breakfast and I’ll bring the coffees and croissants. And I can learn more about what you do and in 10 minutes tell you the sort of clients we work for. How is next Tuesday or Wednesday morning for you?”
It’s original and highly unlikely that you’ll be turned down, if you’ve already built the rapport with the prospect. Try it out yourself and see what the effects are on your success rate at lead generation. At the very least it should be a bit of fun!
More on Lead Generation here.
In my opinion, there is a dceferfnie between love marriage and negotiated marriage . What has been described is definitely negotiated marriage, because the premise of asking the other person is premedidated i.e. you have already decided that he/she is good marriage material. When you meet somebody and realize that you have good chemistry with them amd this closeness/compatibility translates into a wish to marry that in my definition is love marriage. There is a lot more spontaniety in the second case over the first. That’s how I like to see it.