Taking candy from a stranger — your first $100k deal
“If a stranger offers you candy RUN away” — that's what I got told growing up.
Don’t worry, this post is about business, marketing/sales, not chocolate (I wish). Picking off my networking article, I want to share the story of how Pete got his first 6 figure project 2 years ago.
Quick Side story:
Pete went to the local supermarket one evening to buy some chocolate, because why not, and whilst there, he had to choose between Lindt and a lesser known brand; he chose Lindt this time around and went to the register and paid a complete stranger money for a product, he never met this person before, might not ever after, but yet paid this person for a product.
Pete walked out realising he took candy from a stranger and paid the stranger that too, why and how? Familiarity. That's the name of the game, all these brands pay a lot of money to build a “brand” or a “presence” because we as humans have been trained to aggressively ignore things we aren’t familiar with. There’s, of course, the early adopter bunch who’ll try everything but they’re not the vast majority.
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I’m not telling you to spend 1000s of dollars on branding, but you need to spend time and use tactics to build trust and familiarity with the people who want to buy from you, and create an environment of trust where there’s affirmation and social proof that you’re actually great or your product is great.
So with a shoestring budget, this is what Pete did to close the deal;
Pete was part of a facebook group called Sydney Startups where this client initially reached out. The reach out happened because on autopilot Pete would comment or make a post once every 2 days and he did that for a good 3 months.
Consistency, make yourself a palpable routine which you MUST follow
This client was a very traditional one, i.e they liked big brands, they had money and liked floating with the big fish, so the chances were pretty low, to begin with, I mean after all Pete didn’t have money for branding right? — read on…
Pete decided to move from a stranger to a trusted friend. He wrote a fully equipped article on the very project he was going to do for the client, I mean he pretty much gave away the entire execution strategy and pattern to this potential client to do it themselves
Knowledge share, if you tell them how to do it, they’ll come back even more — wanting more. Dont be afraid to share
Then Pete had to work out an effective distribution strategy. Pete traced back to and read through his client’s interactions and found one of his Facebook connections that spoke to the client a couple of times, he reached out to this mutual connection and ASKED him to post this article on the group as a “great read”
Pete then waited nervously to see if the client will like this article, hours went by and he saw that the client interacted with the article, he was very ecstatic! Even more so because 2 minutes after he got a direct message from the client on messenger to catch up for a coffee.
The easiest way to miss a deal, is to not ask for it
Pete didn’t want to miss on this opportunity, he added the client as a friend on FB because he knew that whenever friends posted on this group, Pete got notified, and Pete quickly whipped up another decent article with every word aimed for the client project, a complimentary article and this time Pete put it up there himself and voila — 2 minutes after posting it the client likes the article.
The coffee with the client basically was a revision of the article and how we’d solve the problem and the deal was verbally closed by the end of the coffee.
Familiarity, drives speed and trust in decision making
So there you go, that’s the quick spiel on how Pete landed his first 6 fig client, hopefully, this story helped you if so, please give this a few claps and share away this hopefully inspiring story!
Aaannd here’s da plug, I mean you liked the content right? Do you have a product you want built? My company — Five2One’s products are used by millions and generate millions — get in touch.
Also — I’m very passionate about personal branding and building a strong portfolio — which is why I built out laddr.com — the modern resume. Join the 1000’s snatching their new resume.
