Has this ever happened to you? This happened recently to one of my coaching clients. He’s in commercial real estate and his prospect asked, “What space do you have available?” My client got very excited thinking that he had a “hot prospect.” He researched and researched and then called the prospect back. In these types of scenarios what typically happens is either: 1.) It’s impossible to ever again reach that prospect directly or, 2.) The prospect says, “None of those spaces seem right.” In this case, this coaching client heard scenario #2 and thus was unable to leverage all of his hard work into an appointment.
Here is another example with another coaching client. She’s with an IT firm that routinely saves their clients significant dollars on their IT spend while increasing the security of their data and operations. A prospect recently asked her, “Exactly how will you save my company money?” My client told the prospect she would get back to him, hung up the phone and was totally confused about how to proceed. Bottom line: She did not have an appointment.
In both of these instances, there is an answer to these types of questions. That answer, however, is probably not what you think it is. The answer is:
“That’s a great question and that’s exactly what we would like to discuss with you. What does your calendar look like?”
In the case of my commercial real estate client, I advised him to say:
“That’s a great question and that’s exactly what we would like to discuss with you. Let’s get together so that we can see your current space, learn about your requirements and then make appropriate recommendations. What does your calendar look like?”
My IT client would say:
“That’s a great question and that’s exactly what we would like to discuss with you. Let’s get together so that we can fully understand your situation and make appropriate recommendations. What does your calendar look like?”
Take the basic, “That’s a great question” script and tweak it to suit your situation and the question being asked. Then schedule more meetings.
