How a Snow Storm Builds Business

The city of Toronto and surrounding areas is under a blanket of snow today and the 2 1/2 hour drive into work this morning reminded me of one of the benefits of working from home. Over 2 hours in the car one way can be productive if you're listening to audio books but, there is something to be said for staying home and being the first on your street to have your driveway cleared. And, not having to come home at the end of the day from another 2 hour commute only to have to shovel the driveway and park the car on the road until I do so because the plow has built a 3 foot wall at the end of my drive.

When working from home on a day like this the natural tendency is to focus on shoveling and ignore your business. I found these days to be very beneficial to prospect for new business and build relationships, create warm leads, with the discussion of the snow. let me explain; I found that 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM is the best time to reach the business owners (or "Very Important Top Officer - VITO" as described by Anthony Parinello, Author of Stop Cold Calling Forever and many more Sales related books) who always arrive before their staff . If I was calling them for the first time, I would compliment them on being in the office and comment on how it is amazing how business owners like ourselves can always make it in early but employees always make it in late. (This immediately put us on the same level, Equal Business Stature) I would generally get an agreement to my comment and a dialog was created.

I never tried to sell anything on the phone. My objective was only to get an appointment. So what I would say next is that, I'm not letting the snow slow me down, would you be available this afternoon so I could drop off some information about your industry. Yes, their industry. I would get to know their industry through industry associations, the internet now is a great resource but at that time, the local library and their competition were my best sources for information. I would then state that I came across a great white paper on...yada yada yada - whatever I knew he might be experiencing as an issue or problem in his business. With an agreement to drop it off at an also agreed time, I would of course be on time, actually I always arrived 10 to 15 minutes early, I would then when we met face to face provide some brief information about my company.

If I got a warm response to my trial closing (e.g. how is this issue impacting your business? - A trial close is generally a question that asks their opinion) then I would schedule an appointment to learn more about their company with some questions designed to find their PAIN points - what are they losing sleep over. I would then present my companies solutions in a subsequent meeting.

A snow day is also good to follow up with prospects, and customers, you have already made a contact with and you are now just calling them up to see how the snow is impacting them today to see if I can be of help with any problems. It did not matter that the problem was not related to my business product or service. I wanted to build a relationship, a partnership, built on trust and respect. Perhaps they needed something or someone picked up. "Let me help, I will do that for you", would be my response. When you can be a problem solver for the business owner, VITO, then your name/company, will be remembered when they are in the decision making step of buying.

Embrace the snow from your work from home business.