Every Conversation

There’s a feeling that every conversation should be, in some sense, an opportunity to do marketing about your product.

You know that turning 100% of your conversations into a sales conversation is too much, and will definitely turn people off.

You know that if in 0% of your conversations with potential customers, you mention your product in a positive light, you’ll also be in trouble fast.

And there’s a dissonance if trying to find a suitable number in between.

So maybe you should spend 100% of your conversations doing something different.

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If you focus on listening, in every conversation, you might learn where people are in their search for a better setup. Holding a posture of active listening, mirroring back to the client what they’re saying to you, holding your interest, creating silences, being fascinated with their situation, maybe you’ll find that they’re at an early stage, or at a later stage, in their process to replace the old, in search of the new.

If you focus on discovering what stage they’re at, in every conversation, you might learn the language they used for a search, or how they describe their problem in their own words. You might discover the steps they’ve taken thus far, you might discover their internal pushback to taking the next steps, you might discover that some of their own convictions are creating internal friction. You’ll see whether it’s time, or not, to introduce your product.

If you focus on figuring out whether it’s time, or not, to introduce your product, in every conversation, then maybe you’ll form your own framework, with a set of rules, with a set of questions to ask, with a set of guidelines and a way to approach customers in conversations. Maybe you’ll have a guide to follow to teach others you hire to do the same. At the very least, you might, through consistency and repetition, create a surprisingly good feeling in your customers.

If you focus on making sure your potential customers have a surprisingly good feeling by talking to you, in every conversation, maybe they’ll be generous in singing your praises, telling others about you and your product. You’ll have unlocked an impossible marketing tactic: having the word spread without you making any additional effort.

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Yes, every conversation is an opportunity to market you and your product.

You can go about it any way you like, but at the very least, you can trust that trying to convince every potential customer to buy your product, and thereby risking to lead them away in disgust, that’s the lowest of the lowest bars you can aim for. It gets better from there.