Parties, events, business opportunities, church - these and more require YOU to invite someone to come along. In some instances, inviting is easy peasy. Other times, I know people who would rather have surgery without anesthesia than invite. Well, since the need to invite is crucial to my success; I am diving in.
I recently saw a friend post about a purchase she made for a product I sell. I contacted her when I saw her post to get the deets on who she bought from and why not me. Clearly, she dissed me in buying elsewhere, right? WRONG!
Her response?
She did not know I sold it, heck she was not up-to-date on what I was doing since it had been years since we spoke. Of course, I assumed that because we are Facebook friends she is stalking my page and knows everything I do and is up-to-date on every post I make. Well, not quite, but kinda.
Inviting is an important thing to do and you do not have to be an entrepreneur to need this skill. I totally remember my 7-year-old being anxious about asking friends to his birthday party. He was pretty shy and assumed his classmates did not like him or even know who he was. He was so visibly anxious and agitated, I handed the invitations to his teacher to distribute for him.
Why is inviting so hard to do?
REJECTION! Yep! I said it.
No one wants to be rejected, not even toddlers.
Funny, true story.
So, inviting opens us up to some No's, and maybe even some other painful responses that we are not looking forward to. HOLD ON! This is the first clue...
We ANTICIPATE the rejection and that is enough to halt many in their tracks from even trying. The person(s) in question have not yet given an answer but in our minds they have. We have decided for them that their answer is or will be no. REALLY? So, when exactly did you get your psychic powers and if you do have psychic powers, then you can simply read all minds to ask those sure to give you a "Yes!".
NOT!
This is so CRAZY! Or Cray, Cray as some of my friends prefer to say. If you do not have psychic powers do not decide your prospect will say no. What is more likely at play here is the Law of Attraction and because you expect the NO, the Universe did not disappoint.
Did you know that law works in the positive too?
So, let's say you have decided to be brave, and Invite - Now What?
Inviting like a BOSS! Well, sorta.
I contacted a prospect three days ago by phone and he shared that he had been visited by a Representative from another company for a similar service, but he felt the need to add,
"She must have been new. She was so nervous."
This was a round-about compliment to me because he found me competent and confident. What he did not know is, I am just as nervous but I am determined to cover that sh!# up!
Some may think this is a 'fake it till you make it' approach - but not in TrudyLand. Here, I practice like it's real. I tell my mind to be calm, it is JUST a phone call. The person on the other end does not know me and there is no rule saying I ever have to speak to them again. So, I treat every encounter as a single event, complete in itself. This is crucial because if this one does not go well, I will not allow that single event to ruin my entire day or even the next phone call.
The Slimy Invite - We All Get Them
Just because we have all gotten the slimy invite means all invites are slimy. Make sure yours is not. The slimy invite is self-serving with no consideration for the person being targeted. An inappropriate setting, timing, approach or choice of words. Even the most perfect script can be slimed up by the person delivering it. I have come to conclude that unspoken motive has a way of infusing our voices, body language, and facial expression without our realizing it. Invitations are slimy when the motive is slimy.
So How Does One Invite Like a Boss?
Honestly, I am still working on the definitive answer, but I have learned quite a bit on this journey and I have gotten better at the invite over time. This post is a continuation of that journey and I am simply sharing my experience with you via these shares. Plus, documenting the share reinforces the lesson for me, and creates a trail of where I have been when I arrive at where I am.
#1. Decide to invite. It's just got to be done. Inviting prospects to your presentation, to your event, to your party, to your church, to your office - plan to invite. If you do not plan to invite, invitations will not magically spit from your lips or appear in their mail.
#2. You will get Nos. So what? Roll with it. Most of the time, the no is a rejection of the offer, not a rejection of you.
#3. F.O.R.M. before you invite. Be deliberate about engaging your prospect and build trust and rapport before you ask for the sale. F.O.R.M. is generically appropriate for most invites. F-family, O-occupation, R-recreation, M-message. This is just a template to help you think up things to ask or comment on
#4. Learn to invite. Take classes. I totally endorse this strategy. Unless you were born with this ability naturally, find a way to learn this skill from those who are good at it. I have. I have invested in this skill because I was one that preferred surgery without anesthesia to inviting. I had to learn this skill. The quality of my life depends on it.
#5. Invite. Go do it! In fact, I use a software I was introduced to from one business opportunity to track all my invites, whether they are for that opportunity or not. Thanks to the power of tags, I can sort and group people and keep track of who I invited, what I invited them to, and when to follow-up. What I love about this is, I get the daily reminder to invite six people daily and there is a quantitative tracking on my progress. When I have no or few sales for the week, chances are, if you check - I also had none or very few invites for the week as well.
Sorry, this software is not generically available, but if you join my team I will share how to get access. I am sure there are either other tracking tools available or simply keep a notebook of your efforts.
Inviting does not guarantee sales or results. NOT inviting guarantees NO SALES and NO RESULTS! I will take my chances with inviting to fail forward. Each invite for me is another practice toward improvement.
All this practice has paid off already too.
Treat Every Invite as Practice for the Next Invite.
The first thing about practicing is, it is no longer scary for me to do it, or honestly, LESS scary for me to do it. There are some BHAGS out there that I am yet to get to (BHAG - Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals or certain people I am still not ready for).
Among the No's are some Yeses. Those really amp up my energy to keep going.
The script becomes more natural. I found it hard to practice a script but each time I went through it with a prospect, it sounded less 'scripted'. A script should never be read. Trust me - it will sound very much that you are reading and takes away the power of the well-crafted words. Capture the essence of a script with your own style. Keep the content, but deliver it as you naturally would have any professional conversation.
You will be inviting like a Boss when you can pick up where you detoured from a script with easy transitions that fit the conversation at hand.
Set yourself an invite target. Your ROI will get better with practice so if for now, you need to talk to 100 people to get 3 yesses, eventually you will find inviting 100 gets you 15 yesses, then 30 and so on.
As you can see from this graphic, I have numerical goals of the number of people I need to speak to daily - and that number is further broken down into teammates, existing customers, people in my list (prospects), new additions to my list, and invites.
By ensuring that I speak to a certain number of people every day, and invite at least 6 per day, I will fail forward, or move forward whether my steps are failing or successful ones.
As you can see, I am very transparent that May 17 was the first time I hit every one of my contact targets. Adding new people to my list every day used to be hard for me, but not anymore. Inviting 6 people a day is still a challenge because I will not say Hello, buy my stuff. Having added someone new to my list, I feel compelled to build a relationship with that person at some level and look for a segway to mention how what I have may be a solution to something they mentioned was a problem or a desire of theirs.
I am working on the goal of Inviting Like a Boss. I am work-in-progress. I have had progress. Every day I have progressed and I will continue to work on this skill set because it is that vital to my success. I invite you to consider working on this skill as well until you invite like a boss.