October 19, 2016

How to decrease the impact of a prospect not hiring you

If in your initial sales meeting with a prospect, you attempt to “talk them out of hiring you,” you run the risk of succeeding. In other words, you may convince the prospect to either not hire you for the project or to not do the project at all.

In previous messages, I have explained how to decrease the likelihood of this outcome but sometimes it’ll still happen. Today I want to talk about how to decrease the impact of a prospect not hiring you.

Simply put, the best way to decrease the impact of losing out on a job is to not need the job in the first place.

Here are three way you can set yourself up to not need the job: 1. Financial cushion - Having a few months worth of saving in the back, access to a credit line, or having a spouse who is also generating income are all things that will allow you to move on from a lost deal without undo stress. I suppose this is obvious but I wanted to call it out.

Steady stream of leads - Having a steady stream of leads coming in will give you a sense of stability that puts a lost deal into perspective. Sure you didn’t get this one, but there will be a new one tomorrow (and it’ll probably be a better fit than the one that got away).
Diversified income stream - Creating a number of products and services that cover a range of buyers, types, and price points provides a safety net. Since all your eggs aren’t in one basket, you don’t have to be overly worried if one basket is temporarily empty.

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Vicious Cycle of Desperation Being desperate to land a particular deal is bad situation to be in for many reasons. Perhaps worst of all is that it creates a vicious cycle that can be hard to escape:

You’re desperate to land the deal, so they talk you into a very low price, which means you barely scrape by, which means you don’t have the resources to save/market/diversify, which means you’ll be desperate to land the next deal, so they talk you into a very low price... wash, rinse, repeat.

Decreasing the impact of losing any one deal can have a strong beneficial impact on your business (and mood/life).

Pick one that you believe will be the easiest and carve out the resources to make it happen.

Yours,

—J

P.S. A great way to break out of the vicious cycle of desperation is to stop trading time for money. This is a big mind-shift for most people and can take a long time, but my book will accelerate the process -> http://hourlybillingisnuts.com