“Five ways to make leads count” By Senior Market Advisor (Published 1 Feb 2009 in the Feb 2009 issue of Senior Market Advisor Magazine, Seniormarketadvisor.com).  Whether you think you’re in sales or not, you’re in sales. We’re all in sales. At the same time, we are all prospects / potential clients of someone else. Check these couple key pull quotes:

“Salespeople often default to the standard, ‘Are you ready to buy yet?’ phone call as their preferred method of follow-up, but clients today want to be informed and engaged, not just sold to,” Hayden says. “If you can become a trusted source of information and a friendly voice in their ear, prospects will welcome contacts from you rather than avoid them, and you’ll also receive many more unsolicited referrals, even from prospects who haven’t yet worked with you themselves.”

Bellevue, Wash.-based advisor Douglas Nickson knows first-hand how that can work, based on a meeting that came out of one of his seminars. “One time a couple years ago, I met with a fellow who really liked his stockbroker and just wanted a particular thing tweaked. I informed him exactly what to tell his stockbroker to make it happen and that if that’s all he needed, he really did need me. As I was leaving, he mentioned I was seeing his good buddy, who also attended my seminar, a couple days later. His buddy and wife turned out to be a $500,000 client, and I always figured the first guy must have called him and told him that I was a straight shooter.”

Did you know what 50% of people met their current mate / partner via friends. There’s is every reason to believe that referrals work the same on the clock. Look at the example above – you never know where that next great deal (or new friend, etc.) is going to come from. Don’t be small minded.

In short, resist thinking about what you’re trying to” sell”.  Instead orient yourself around a means  that not only focuses on what the other person might benefit from buying but also how they would like to buy it. Is that not the way you would want to be treated?