Hi everyone; my apologies for the delayed posting.

I just went to a communication course this weekend, and I got a deeper understanding of how listening works. Pay attention to this; it has a lot of implications for those of us who would rather not make phone calls.

Now, note that I am not about to tell you to start making cold calls. I maintain that calling your friends to sell them something is a bad idea. I also maintain what I said in my very first post; if you have lost contact with a member of your warm market, the thing to do is call them up and just say hi.

That being said, remember what I wrote about your warm market list a few posts ago. As you’re writing down a list of names, think of how each person could benefit from your product or service, and think of who they might know. But then, stop there. Just be aware of these things before you call them. DON’T call them with an agenda.

So, here’s the good news. What you’re going to do is say, “Hi, how are you,” or something along those lines, and then just shut up. Odds are, they’ll start talking. The object of the game is to get them to keep talking until they run out of things to say. Then, ask a question about something they just said. Try to pick something that they seemed interested in. Then, you’ll probably get them started again and they’ll talk for awhile longer.

The beauty of this approach is that you don’t have to have anything figured out before you call them! It makes life a lot easier. Also, you won’t have to bring up your business, because most likely they’ll ask you about it.

That’s all for now. I still have some posts coming about how to create your message, and I’ll just close by saying that if you focus your energy on listening, the whole process becomes a lot easier.