"What is in it for me?"

Ric Mistri

What are you working on and how can I help?

"What is in it for me?" This is a spine chilling question and I used to see it as a selfish question as a BDM. Then I began to think about it more & more, and I discovered that I would never make a decision unless I knew exactly "what was in it for me". Why would I buy a house in this neighborhood, why would I give you my hard earnt money to invest in shares and why should I work for you?

So I began to look at how I approached each client and I discovered that I had the ABC (Always Be Closing) approach to sales. This works well but is extremely difficult to continue because of your goal driven attitude and people tend to pick up on this after a while. So I began to change my "pitch" and focus on what I could give the client for nothing. Things like competitors names, services we could provide at a lower cost, and free customized reports for each of the departments.

This was not an easy pivot for me but I managed it and now I work for a fantastic company where its core belief is to provide a service that does not cost the stakeholders a dollar. In fact a key benefit of our proposal is that we provide the stakeholders a share of the profits.

Recently I have had several Owners' Corporation companies approach me and ask permission to be able to add our information to a proposal they were sending a developer. They let me know that the key reason they were adding Freedom Internet to their proposal was because the developer asked "What is in it for me?". They found when adding key no costs benefits to a proposal they were more likely to get the contact.

I helped them with the information and asked them to especially focus on the following;

Apartments with pre-installed internet will support higher apartment pre-sales.
System installed at zero cost to the developer
Free Wi-Fi supplied in common areas
Free internet plan for the building management, connecting CCTV, digital screens

I'm happy to say that this type of approach was a win, win, win for everyone involved. The owners' committee company received the contract the developers saved 20K (approx.) because they did not have to install an internet backbone and Freedom Internet won because we were able to place our service into these buildings.

So my point in all this is don't be afraid of the question "What is in it for me?" because we all as this question all the time and we can use it to help us. I now place this question front and center whenever approaching potential new clients.

Source: LinkedIn

Junaid Tahir
www.DailyTenMinutes.com