Why your next lunch and learn will suck farts from a straw!

Hi Mr guy I want to do business with. I am calling on behalf of unoriginal corp, we are the leading provider of boring! We would like to invite you to a group sales pitch disguised as a lunch and learn. We invited everybody in our database so space is limited, can I enroll you over the phone?

Have you ever wondered why all the “hot sales prospects” you recently invited to your latest lunch and sell never showed, bothered to confirm, or only a small percentage showed up? Let me give you a clue. Your “hot new prospect doesn’t care about your product, a free lunch, or you; So make them!

Why don’t they care Marc, I am a hell of a nice guy? Not to mention my widget will revolutionize the way they do what ever the hell they do they are just stupid tire kickers!

Let me ask you this o swami of the sales pitch, have you given them a reason to care? Chances are the only communication you have ever had with your “hot prospects” is either a voice mail message or asking them if it is OK to call them back in 6 months. You need to get to know them, date them, and romance them.

I remember trying to speak to the HR Director for Imax. Every-time I would call her assistant Tammy would say the say thing “she is not at her desk right now can a take a message.” Normally I would no thank you, I will call back, and set a task for 3 weeks down the road then repeat. This time though I caught myself and said sure but before you transfer me Tammy can I ask you a question? Sure, Tammy replied.

My question was simple, “What movies are you working on right now? and the conversation began. I came to find out that they filmed the opening scene of The Dark Knight, and started to explain the process of what it takes to shoot that particular opening scene in the Imax format. I almost forgot to  mention Tammy was a brand ambassador, she loved working for Imax.

We talked for at least 10 minutes on various subjects, by the way her dogs name was sprocket and she was getting ready to celebrate her 30th wedding anniversary.

Tammy then asked me what I did. Does it get any sweeter than that. I told her about the company that I worked for and what I was hoping to talk to The Director of Human Resources about. When I finished Tammy said hold on, let me see if she is at her desk. The next sound I heard was “Hi this is Lisa!”

Remember this. It is impossible for someone not to like you that truly believes you like them. If I had a dollar for every person that I had built rapport with, lets just say I would have a whole bunch of dollars. Now back to lunch and learning. You need to be like Casper The Ghost, transparent in your messaging.

1. If your purpose is to gather a group of prospects in a room at lunch time with the agenda of selling something call it a what it is a lunch and sell.
2. If your purpose is to gather a group of people in a room and and truly teach them something about your industry, giving them something of value in exchange for their time call it a lunch and learn and leave your product pitch at the office.

Think about it this way the purpose of my blog is different than the purpose of my web site. My website is my sales brochure where I pimp my services. The purpose of my blog in to share information and hopefully engage a reader in conversation, not to sell my services! in fact I never even mention my services in my blog, it is just not the place for it.

Here is an idea instead of inviting your “30 of your hottest prospects” to a lunch and learn invite 1 or 2 of then to lunch or dinner, better yet once a month sponsor an I.T. pizza party at their location and if your really into spending money feel free to invite yours truly. I look forward to your comments.