Have People Stand In Line Eager Give You Their Business Card

If you’ve ever been on stage, doing a talk or presentation then you’ll know how often this happens…

The audience is full of people that are just right for your business. You do the best talk of your life. They laugh at your jokes. Agree with your ideas and ask lots of useful questions. You’ve really got these people interested and the room is buzzing with energy.

Then, as your spot ends, it just kind of fizzles out. All these potential prospects that you’ve invested time sharing your knowledge with get caught up in conversations, go to the loo (rest room) or rush off to catch their trains. Worse still, you get caught in a conversation with someone you already know who won’t be buying anything you have to offer anyway.

Minutes later everyone but a few people who waited patiently for your “friend” to leave you alone is gone. You’ve lost another opportunity to fill your pipeline with fresh, hot, leads. Sure they know about you now but you’ve lost the initiative. You’ve lost the permission to move them along your pipeline.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. A little trick I’ve been using in my talks and sharing with clients for the past few years ensures you’ll have an orderly line of people eager to give you their business cards every time.

In fact if this seemingly simple trick wasn’t so devastatingly powerful you might be forgiven for thinking “why are you telling me this?”

So here’s the trick – we call it Special Package Magic! The key ingredients to its magic are human curiosity, scarcity and peer pressure.

1. Prepare some additional material to support your talk. Incentives such as a tips list, the talk notes, useful/fun information, a discount for one of your services, details of a competition etc. all work.
2. Package these up in a sealed envelope. Our preference is silver plastic, but brown/white paper, a plastic bag or wallet folder will all work well enough.
3. At the end of your talk pick up one of your special packages and tell your audience that you’ve got some additional FREE information for them (be vague about the contents) and all you’d like in return is a business card.
4. Stand in a prominent place – at the exit is good. Get some assistance (ideally from the friend who would have otherwise kept you talking) if you think it’s necessary.
5. Watch the line of eager prospects form – all with business cards at the ready.
6. Smile – if you don’t grin when you see this simple trick work like magic then you’re probably suffering from a Botox overdose!

• My personal experience and client feedback is that you’ll get around 90% of the people in your audience give you their card. The other 10% usually don’t have a card, don’t have a pulse or know you already.

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