If you’ve been involved in, or studied “sales” at all, you are aware that much of the work comes in actually asking for the sale. If you skip this step, no sale is likely to be made, and no-one wins.

Pretty obvious.

But, let me tell you a quick story.

In the past 5 weeks me and my wife have been going to dinner weekly with an awesome younger couple we actually met while dining. We tend to eat out a lot, and during one evening experiencing a new Mediterranean restaurant in town, my wife struck up a conversation with the couple next to us. They already had their food, and we were interested in how it was. A conversation quickly started, and they stayed to talk while we eventually got our order, and finished supper.

Normally, this sort of thing would end with an exchange of information, and talk of getting together for dinner in the future.

If you’ve ever had anything remotely similar happen to you, you are well aware that there is virtually no chance of either party calling and setting up a future engagement. This applies to running into an old friend, a chance business meeting, etc..

So, instead of leaving it to chance, I pretty much “forced” the issue, by helping to arrange the next meeting then and there. We chose where and when to meet the following week on the spot, without putting it off. We’ve gone out every week using the same technique. Arranging our next meeting at the end of our current one.

It’s not rocket science. It’s really simple! But many businesses which *could* practice this, simply don’t. The consequences are that they throw money away on gaining that first customer, but not following up and asking for the NEXT sale immediately. Their new clients drift elsewhere, or otherwise forget about the positive experience they had with the business owner.

This can be applied to almost any service business, and is especially useful in personal services (physical and mental health, etc). It’s also practiced online with “One Time Offers”, and other tactics which basically do the same thing. Customers are immediately presented with another offer, while the positive effects of the first are still lingering.

Think about how you can create your follow up sale during the initial one. You may just strike gold for almost no extra work.

Oh, and it works for things other than sales, as described in my true story.

Let me, and others know how you might apply this to situations you face by commenting below!

Thanks,

Tim

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