Had an interesting experience recently with my doctor. I’d picked up a parasite in Bali that was knocking me about. I’d had an initial blood test but my doctor wasn’t happy with the results, and said she wanted me to see a specialist to get more tests. She made the call. Great news, she said, he can see you this morning. You need to head over now. She didn’t even ask if I was free. So I drove over while cancelling my next meeting on the way.

After two hours in the waiting room, I was thinking to myself, wow, what a business model this guy has. I’m a prospect for this guy’s business, I get sent over urgently to wait two hours until he’s ready to see me. And when I finally did see him, there was no mention of price.

As thought leaders we aspire to this sort of positioning. To be so valued, and so scarce that prospects would be willing to cancel whatever else they had going on to go and wait for two hours before a sales meeting. Not that I suggest we treat our prospects like that. And there’s a whole other blog about a disruptive business model for doctors, but that’s for another day.

When we start, we do our sales around our prospects. We’re chasing them, and we do sales around their schedule. We’ll go and meet them in their office.

If our practice evolves we get to the point where prospects start approaching us. And then we can do things like scheduling all our sales meetings back-to-back in the same cafe. Or having people set up to receive our call in a certain window of time.

Love to hear your thoughts – where on that spectrum to do sit? You can leave your comments below.