Lessons

Lesson Info

Point of Connection with Clients

I really want to encourage you if you're in that process of just beginning to form your business, that you get out there and start selling what it is you're going to build your business around, whether it's a service or product sell a few of those beta test it because the biggest mistake that a lot of new entrepreneurs and business owners make is they build it and have it hope they will come feeling without having tested to see if the concept the service of the product is viable. So with this one, we want to dive right in, we'll get past the facebook group you can connect with may on z me dot com has all of my social media links up there. I think a number of people have already done that. I apologize. I have not been on twitter since we started this adventure together. I will be jumping on there later today, and I'll be climbing on facebook as well, because I think I have a whole bunch of facebook invites to attend to this is about building your business success, and we're jumping righ...

t into your port. Your points of connection um, poison connection is something that came up yesterday, actually. And a number apparently of the designers that were inside the chat room we're asking about how to form points of connection with potential clients and it's something that I've done for years and there's a simple formula to it and I'm going to walk you through the formula and it's actually on page twenty six in the workbook but we do have a cartoon here we have two kitty cats one is at the desk and then we have the kitty cat in front of desk and they want to say it's nice to finally meet you and thanks so much for the dead mice you sent over so this is about forming a point of connection there both kitty cats and paying it forward with dead mice I don't recommend you send in my state have your clients unless they're kidding that's um so this really is about becoming magnetic to your clients and customers you have an inherent ability to do this because each one of you is sitting on a gold mine and that gold mine is about the unique combination that only you represent of history, education experience, personality interests, hobbies and more and you're the only one in the world who represents that combination when you mind the goal that you're sitting on you're going to become magnetic to your market and you'll find your sales increasing, your revenues growing and your business developing and it gets very, very exciting everyone is sitting on a gold mine there is no one who is not you just haven't mind the gold and that's one of the key pieces we're going to do today and we've gotta find exercise to make it happen so this is all about mining that gold and who you are to get what you want it is a tweet herbal and this is something that I've been working on for years I work on it with large audiences small audiences all my individual clients because once I mind your golden bringing to the surface you get to take that forward and turn it into gold in your business and in your life and that's a lot of fun to dio so this is about the formula called create starts with a c which is for connect the r is for relate the e is for educate the a I had to stretch a bit here work with me I'm a creative is for act otherwise interact ok touch is the tea and is for engage which ends in sales so the quote part about this is you don't actually ever have to sell when you use this process connect relate engage interact, touch educate, connect relate educate thank you interact touch engage equals sales just keep that formula in your head I do have a couple of alternatives on this occasionally I'll change it a little bit but not very often um I used to say excite instead of engaged when I had touching excite together some went wrong with that formula it didn't sound good and sound safe okay, so how you can create sales success is by connecting with consistent and creative relationship building social branding in today's age now I use this formula from when I started my first business back in nineteen ninety four pre social media ok, this works off line as well as online I've now adapted the formula to the social media age but at the time there was no social branding social branding meant going to a networking event and being branded as my business and moving through the room making connections now it's about doing it online so it's a little bit different but the process still works it is about relating with your cliff note bio and your points of connection now I don't know if cliff notes actually date may or not I'm not sure do they still have cliff notes in school? Really? I hope so ok, so that's what we're going to dive into today on our t shirts is creator our cliff note bios and our points of connection and it's about educating with your blawg webinar seminars and building your k l t factor which is your no like and trust factor k lt extremely important for you to have that know like and trust going on in order to gain in business and clients for a lifetime of benefit, by the way, I do not advocate that you burn and turn through clients and customers. It would be rare that you have just a one off service or product, so my goal is for you to create relationships of lifetime benefit so that you actually can value your clients in terms of how much money can you make from them over the course of the lifetime of your business instead of a one off sale, it really makes an enormous difference when you look at it that way and they become infinitely more valuable when instead of one sale, you look over the course of five years or ten years that dollar volume multiplies, and you can really start to understand the value of a referral, for example, which is another segment we're going to dive into. The interaction is with gratitude. Layer your presence in contact, and we'll go deeply into each one of these pieces and touch with a newsletter. If you don't want to use a newsletter, you can certainly do social media updates and elements like that, but it has to be on the personal side in a professional sense, there is a difference between professional, personal and intimate. And I want you to blend the personal and professional and stay out of the intimate, intimate is t m I too much information, and occasionally people go that route on social media, I don't recommend it and then engage is with invites to events, personal calls, notes, yes, hand written notes, and I'm not even left handed and you want to create credit. So what you're doing is you're paying it forward, you creating goodwill? You're creating that sense that they want to reciprocate with you, uh, it's like the cat giving the other cat mice, sending them over in advance than that cat who got the mice is now willing to say, hey, I feel like I need to reciprocate and give you some of my time and see what other ideas you have other than sending me dead mice. What is really working for me? So we've got a really cool exercise yogurt for the mind where I want you to take the t shirts that are in front of you, and if you are obviously online at home, if you've got a t shirt, a towel, a spare cape and we want to make this your superpowers, I don't know doesn't have a spare cape out there, there might be kind of fun. Maybe you could take a dish, tell and do this and put a pin under and make it a cape. I recall that from a couple of movies I saw years ago, but if you've got a t shirt that you don't mind writing on her drawing on, I'm going to ask you a serious of questions and I want you to either illustrate or answer the questions in word format now I'll give you a quick example and by the way, I cannot say that I did this because we have established early on I'm a drafts person and a designer I'm not, um an artist in that sense, so this is a t shirt that I gave a friend of mine is very artistic, my answers and he did my shirt up for me so you can see a lot of things you can see kind of hollywood that's a bit of the background piece and then you can see hawaii is the hula girl and I've got movies on here because I love going to movies trip to venice I took on the sleeve there um turn to see upside down and backwards what else? I'm looking at these mountains of highlands north carolina because I have a house in highlands which I love I love to garden um been to bali, birmingham, alabama spent a lot of time there uh I've been to greece that would be the acropolis and then we got another bunch of cool stuff on the back so you can write on the front the back the arms any place you want to write on this t shirt to answer the questions the questions are all easy they're all about you and there's no wrong answers because they're your answers so um hopefully you're ready online has the tap room doing anybody anybody pulling t shirts forward on and ok now you've got a fabric markers if if you've got fabric markers online you'll be able to actually watch this and where it going forward and have some real fun with it um the questions are like I said they're easy ah the level of detail is entirely up to you and I'm going to give you my answers as we move through because I want to find out what points that connection that I might not have tapped yet with you in my online audience so where have you lived where have you lived it could be a big question or a little question you might never have left your own town and that's totally fine on the other hand you might be a military brat and he lived all over the world so I want to have some idea of the places that you've lived for example I was born in los angeles california taken back to the outback of australia for my first year of life then bounced too um, hawaii for time honolulu and then bounced to new mexico before we wound up in los angeles, then moved to connecticut for boarding school and then to upstate new york for four years of college. I've also lived in birmingham, alabama. Obviously atlanta, georgia right now I've lived on mackinac island in michigan for a summer summer job I had I've lived in greece for six to eight weeks while I worked there. At one point I've lived in nashville, I've lived in, um, missing a couple here. I know I am charlotte, north carolina um, it might still be missing one or two in there somewhere, but I lived a lot of different places I've moved about a dozen times, if not more than that, probably actually fifteen times and I'm one of these nuts, they get bored with her environment really fast, so I went it moving every two to three years whether I need to or not, which is expensive and exhausting, but I do it anyway, so if anybody can relate to that it's a point of connection, if any of the places I just named are places that you've lived also that we've got that point of connection and we could talk about that, especially some places small is mackinac island because that's a pretty tiny place if you're not familiar with it or it sounds vaguely familiar, it was in that movie somewhere in time with christopher reeve you know, the irony is I spent the whole summer there and I never saw the movie I've still never seen the movie is that crackers? Yeah, totally crazy. So the places that you've lived I'm you can put the state the city if it's a country whatever you want to do these that places you lived are you married, single, divorced or widowed? Now I know that sounds like I'm getting kind of personal, but it makes a difference and knowing that about your client um I happen to be single, not yet married and I keep married people together. I just have to share a couple of dating stories and they're calling each other, apologizing and saying, honey, I love you works that brilliantly, but I relate really well to people who are single or divorced, obviously and weaken swap stories about dating and anybody who's married my stories keep them together on dh somebody whose widowed is usually, uh, it's there obviously single again so we can share our stories too. So it's a point of connection, you know, people who are both divorced you con's oh, how long have you been divorced? Oh, yeah, I know what that's like and you have that point of connection you wantto leverage these because this is about bringing your human side forward and not being all about business and everybody's got these pieces that's the cool part you just don't bring him forth on a daily basis and you think they're not worth anything and they're worth a whole heck of a lot where did you attend school? And I want you to answer high school and college and if you went to any graduate school so my high school was groton in massachusetts it was a boarding school and I have actually had audiences where somebody else either had been to groton or knew somebody who had which is just kind of an amazing point of connection gets a very small school I was the second class of coed girls they had just allowed girls in the year before and then I spent four years at cornell in the frozen tundra of upstate new york with twelve foot drifts barefoot uphill both ways now you may not have gone to cornell, but you may know somebody who did or you may know somebody in that collection of schools known as the ivy league schools or you may know somebody from upstate new york and the ithaca area it's a beautiful part of the country in the summertime in the summertime it really is frozen tender time in the winner, which lasts for a very long time but pop your school down whether you want to write that down or whether you've got there logo locked in your memory banks or the first stands is of a school song and you want to put that on your shirt because this is really about bringing who you are into what you do and it's the fastest way to get what you want when you reveal yourself in your business, you get more of what you want than you ever imagined possible it's by hiding and wearing that costume and that mask every day that you're not getting what you want, you're not feeling engaged tuned in, turned on and connected at your highest place at your essence, and we want to bring that all forward now in mine, the gold and who you are. All right, so do you have kids? Kids are generally a bit of a financial liability until they hit twenty plus years old. Now you get to make them an asset, so if you've got kids and parents of all ages can always relate teacher there that's the cool part. If you have a sixteen year old and somebody else has a six year old, you can always go I remember when mine was six oh my gosh, I didn't think they'd make it this far or that one is, you know, got the six year old could say what's it like after six does it get any easier? You know you can swap those stories doesn't matter whether you're a mom or a dad or a grandmother or a grandfather or an aunt or an uncle you could always relate over kids and don't forget kids activities that could be an amazing place to meet your ideal client when you know your ideal client so well and we've done some profiling right here in a prior segment picking your ideal client when you know who that ideal client is you're going to know if they've got kids and how old those kids are where they are in which life cycle then you're going to know are they hanging out of the soccer field on saturdays are they at the swim meet on tuesday nights are they at the dance recital are they heading to p t a meetings are they shopping for colleges? Are they heading to graduation ceremonies? These are important pieces to know so this is going to enrich the depth of information you have about your ideal client and give you some really easy points of connection your apparent their apparent that's a place to connect on and these are the places where your competition isn't because they don't know about mining the golden who they are so the beautiful part is that this points of connection exercise will help you stand head and shoulders above the competition in a very comfortable natural way and give you that extra boost where there might be ten other people fairly equally qualified to provide the service or product that you do, but you're the one who's made the point of connection that created the magnetism that's going to push that deal over the top. For example, I have a client that ostensibly hired me because we were both from california, she was from northern I was from southern, we both had a love of folk art you know anything about california? And I think a lot of you probably do that's like two separate continents, northern and southern california, but that was her tipping point. Another one I had been teaching a class at emory she had me in class for six weeks, but when we discovered that she'd been to the same boarding school as my younger sister ten years earlier, what are the odds of that one that became the tipping point and our point of connection? So these will become your tipping points for that client or customer to decide to work with you instead of one of the other qualified providers, and it really will set you apart and it's an easy way to do it because it's inherent to who you are so it's simply about bringing that peace forward I've never carried of somebody remembered my name if they could remember something about me the girl who's related to or the woman who had traveled to greece, and she told us that story about it. Okay, it's less important that they remember exactly who you are if they remember appointed connection and they want to go back down that path and they have your contact that's where you want to use these and you want to use these when you're networking, way friendlier to network this way than it is to walk up and say hi, who are you with who? That's uncomfortable? How much more interesting to say hi, who are you? We're going to get to better questions in that shortly. Okay, so then I want to know where he traveled. Where have you traveled? Yeah, you're gonna need to flip the shirt over now. Where have you traveled? One of the things that I made a commitment to when I got that big wake up call about what the real lessons were with my mom passing so young, I was twenty four, she was two, sixty two and it was very, very sudden was that life is short, perishable and unpredictable, and we're not guaranteed more than the moment we're in, so you've got to make the most of every moment and I made a commitment that I wasn't gonna wait. To take the trips and do the big things in life. I wasn't gonna wait till I necessarily had the resources to do it. Yeah, I have lived on credit cards in my day, and I'm really glad I did because you never know what's going to change what's going to happen so I have add ventured to india, which is an amazing, amazing country. I've been to bali, I've been to greece, I've been tuna, paul and dubai, I've written and elephant I've ridden a camel, I've ridden horses that's a little tamer I've hot air balloon nine three continents I love doing things like that and I've also been to australia and new zealand in africa and in africa. I think that the coolest thing was their belief system was what they shared with me was they said, we look at the sky as god's belly. I have never been able to look at this guy the same way since I just think that's extraordinary so travel has informed a large part of who I am and I have clients who are armchair travelers. They have no desire to go themselves. They just love to hear the stories I also have, folks will say, oh my gosh! You need to go to sessions such a place because it's near someplace have already been or they'll say, I know you love to travel. Have you been over here? We went and here's what it was like it's a great point of connection. One of my best clients came from an opportunity where we were both taking a museum tour in atlanta from the emory carlos museum. We were on a bus all day sitting next to each other, and we started talking back and forth about the travels and the trips were taken, and a year later she called me and I won't it doing work with her for two years, so you just have no idea where these point the connection will take you, but they really tend to stand out in people's memory banks beyond just your professional status. It gives them memory pegs and hooks, and you want to leverage as many of those as you possibly can. So put the places you've traveled. I think I've been to forty eight of the fifty states, um, and spent a lot of time in hawaii when I was growing up because my father was there so we would travel a couple three times a year to visit him into alaska. I don't recommend going in march by the way unless you really like to ski and I'm not really a skier um and I've been down tio bun air it's where I got certified in scuba diving um put the adventures and the trips on your t shirt because these are the pieces that make you the colorful individual that you are and the one of a kind that you are how we doing in the chat room chris we're doing well we give it such a mix of people who have lived in different places we have people who have traveled around we have jade who's lived all throughout australia now lives in louisville, kentucky wow shelly's lived in minnesota for a long time venice for a short time in richmond in the middle there and then we have some people carol j has been in ontario, canada her entire life yes, we have people who are all over the board lots of different travelers here so this exercise a lot of fun it is a lot of fun is a lot of fun and venice I've got a great quick story to share on venice we went when I was ten years old with my mother it was our european trip and we landed a tw the airport there and you have to take a little water taxi to get to venice itself and so it was myself my two sisters and a little brit lady named dottie who was my mother's dresser in the theater and we all piled into this water taxis a fairly tight accommodation way too much longer is it was women traveling of course and we're going along the water and mom standing up on tiptoe snapping pictures this is the old days we didn't have iphones or or or phone cameras and I'm sitting in the back enjoying the sun and we're going along suddenly hit something and mom tumbles backwards twist your ankle picks herself up, russia's yourself off and start snapping pictures again and about thirty seconds later she looks down and she realizes she's standing ankle deep in water we've sprung a leak now my mother spoke french, spanish, a smattering of german and a bit of japanese no italian but she yelled agua at the driver, which was spanish and he whipped around he turned ash white and at this point we're not just flying across we're just zooming across the water he guns the boat goes for the nearest concrete and bank, but they didn't get us to he gets us out of the boat gets the luggage out of the boat he's standing at last view I looked back and he standing waist deep in water at this point tossing anything he can salvage the boat is his livelihood mother whisks us off to a hotel in a lovely dinner and the next morning at breakfast she tells us now I have no idea if the stories to ring out my mother was a brilliant storyteller but she tells us that they had dragged the canal after that and they had discovered that it was sabotage intended for the president who arrived a day early it was our very own james bond family moment so you know the memories of your travel should really evoke things that happened on the trip whether they were good or bad and hopefully if they were bad in retrospect you can laugh about it because if you can't you're in trouble all right so where do you go to church it works in the south if you don't want to put it on your shirt that's totally cool but it definitely works in the south where do you shop are you a mall rat or you into boutiques and have you got a favorite sports team now sports team would not be on my shirt I do not watch any sports the only way you'll get me to watch a sport is if it's alive rugby match ninety minutes no commercial interruptions and the beer stays cold it's the only kind of can do I don't do the televised sports at all and anything slower than that it's a four hour camped you can't sit still longer ninety minutes and the other thing I really want to see on your shirts pets pets anybody got any pets too many you know I'm gonna make this easy because I'm also gonna walk through all of these through slide format so if anybody's forgot any of these here we go where have you lived if you want to tweet us tell us some of folks have already been doing that have they been willing to tell us if they're married single divorced or widowed? I don't know if they have or not and school choice is what's the school choices that we're walking through these questions again case you missed any of it the first time a love scene was happening with these shirts this is so much fun I really want the fix in the chat room if anybody is working on a shirt snap a picture send it up we'd love to see it we'd love to see it hey where did you go to school place your spouse kids and siblings to remember what I said about my sister she'd been to that boarding school and my client had ten years earlier my first client in interior design came because of a mailing I did to cornell alum in the atlanta area and I didn't know any of them but because of our cornell connection they hired me and it led to working together for over fifteen years never underestimate the power of your points of connection they are incredibly incredibly powerful your kids in sports as I said soccer field on saturdays um dance recitals where you've traveled really rich territory to mine mine that goal if you've not traveled that's totally fine it makes you really special and very, very rare it's like meeting a native atlantan where I live is very rare almost everybody's a transplant so that gives you a special cachet as well leverage your cachet revel in that place ace tell us where you've traveled we got any more cool comments coming in from the chat room people are just sharing more and more about the places that they've been and people are comparing travel stories talking about different sports we've got some golf in some college football fans yeah, lots of thousands of variety here say they're connecting with each other based on their points of connection I love that the where do you go to church like it really works well in the south and it's just kind of a dagger in the south that is expected you're going to be asked that it is what happens where you shop are you boutique shopper your mall rat aye aye d beauty side auntie malls like like original one of a kind I only buy artwork of its original I'm not really a she clay or ah even a limited edition print used to do a lot of women edition and now I don't want to do that anymore I wantem all original and sports, when my favorites, I do love soccer to soccer's a cool spot. My other guideline on sports is I have to be able to see their bodies, and I don't mean this whole football thing because they've got all this plastic covering them up. I can't see their bodies because I look at bodies is art, and so for me, I need to be able to see their bodies moving and see what they're doing. I think that's basketball when this short shoes to be short, exactly on and they used to wear knickers in baseball in delaware, full length is she's a fun right there? Yeah telling you hate those old baby short like leave them right there with their really only getting completely I truly do, and my take on sports is I will do any sport that requires zero training that's why I've bungee jumped in tandem, hang glided in paris, sailed and while scuba diving took a week of training, but at the end of the week, I was down to ninety six feet and I was supposed to go beyond sixty, so that was kind of cool got a new game for you, I'll tell you about it later on, and I haven't tried base jumping yet and I want to do a wing suit. I think wing suits require a lot of training training really leap out their pets really want to see your pets on the shirts? I got to kitty cats you and yang I think they went up on the I don't know if my pets wound up on my shirt and the friend who did it are they on body back here? Yes, to a union and you know, sure, I miss my babies. Yeah, they are. Of course, the hilarity is there the reverse now? Twitty's really fat indians, really skinny cousins, like sixteen years old and twinkies like seven and so their sizes are reversed, but yeah, that's them I used to having in yang, but I had to let young go. Um, so you know who are your pets? Pastors such an easy topic in people love to talk about the bits, and everybody carries pictures of their pets with them, especially dog owners. Come on, fess up, you dog owners, you've got pictures of your pet on your phone as cat owners don't don't do that so much. I have pictures of my neighbor's dog on my phone. Okay, so here's, what I want to know and chris, you can answer this for me. Who of these people online are following each other now because it points a connection are they following each other on twitter? They facebook friending each other? I think so, because of this exercise. Yeah. That's really that's really a key piece. Ok, so wherever you are on your t shirt, I want you to stand up and yeah, it can be a tricky and I want you preferably to put it on over what you currently got on. Yeah, we got my australia on here with the good day love that I want I've skydived I forgot about that. You forget about skied any god and even amber. See, I've even got amber heard on their night amber yesterday. Okay, well, I got it. I got to show you guys come on up here. Yeah. Let's, let's, seize! Wow! This is so cool! Mission. Okay, well, trying this is cool and happily divorced of love. It wicked one kid that's now. But we put both each kid gets an arm. I love it. You know, like the reality is mitt leg. Well, when you travel a lot not nearly as much as you that's for sure. Not yet. There's. Plenty of time left. And I haven't done tokyo and I really would like tio wonderful, I spent the whole time going to the different public swimming pools. And because there's just everything so clean that one thing it was just such amazing leap lady that here this week the week I was there was so, so high it was like one hundred seven degrees, so I just went from pool to pool the pool was great that's need all right, let's, take a look at this. Oh, you did the bird. I love it. And the internet that's very fun smith college get married. No children yet you're gonna have kids on your sleeve. Something at some point I'm not sure what you think. Yeah. Ok. Let me explain the gap here. Okay? Cats are deliciously independent. Dogs require you to get up it really obscene hours like six a m and they force you to be up until midnight. I don't have done for a reason. Might also be why I'm not married like, gosh bottom. Yeah, your future more likely to get a cut here, fluffy massachusetts where would you get in the back and nothing on the back yet? Yes, we're kind of friend. Yeah, cool. I want you guys to continue these outside of class because they're really fun and I really encourage you do this exercise with a significant or in your case, you kind of hold family folks do this with how fun with that day it was sit down and literally see the things that you don't even know about them because they've never thought they were important to tell you this I think that'd be cool all right rich let's see, you know the list is too long I didn't finish it on the list. Thiss awareness of your writing now it's very architectural no, it is it is it is all right be anything on the back travel is too much to put down but it's been about over ten million miles just along when you have course because of your means you're a flight attendant yeah yeah no kids no single that would be my kind of box I'm right there with you. All right, mr shell, you want to come up? Yeah let's work about why my hasn't almost nothing on it I had to sketch it out first because I have a friend you mine because I knew that but we have a plan and they're wise it would be I don't play against way got here going ok that's very cute pumpkin shell and this this is the first president ever got me which is this great big ring I made today I given a note baby's a little bling and great ring thiss is my emptiness okay, I wait if all I was going to have kids and I never did but that's my emptiness this it's just get spares willingly going happen doctor looking around to adopt them this is my hometown that's the golden gate bridge and those air this those is a those resumes that yeah sailboats out and then cool baby very cool and then I was a montessori teacher for years so this is my pink tower started grow okay um and there's a whole bunch of other stuff cool well here's what we're gonna do is we're gonna all stand together for this then get one one really cool um shot of all of us standing together come on over here in front of in front of the table is all right all right here we owe in his flat screen we really want to see I want to know that there's some pictures coming through for you up there absolutely yeah yeah I think this thing will be checking twitter later on because I want to see what people have done you see the opportunities here I do credit my faux finishes the one who did this I talked him into it. Could you please do you want to shirt? Thanks. All right. Well thanks everyone now do you guys understand the point of this it's not just an idle exercise did this does the point of this makes sense that I wanted to bring these factors forward because I think you forget too often what a wonderful repository of experiences that you are. Where is your education, whether it's a trip you took, whether it's, the fact that you're married or single have kids don't have kids. These are all facets of your persona that become points of connection much easier than you ever, ever imagine. So you don't just have to go down that path of who are you and what do you do or find out about them in the moment you get them talking, start listening for those places of connection where you go, oh, my gosh, my sister went there or, oh, my gosh, that's, one of the places I've been wanting to go forever. Can you share the greatest experience you had on that trip that you took? I want to pick your brain about that for a minute, and when you make them the spotlight. But she formed that connection, your magnetic in ways that you never imagined possible. It truly is the coolest thing to d'oh.