Chapter 30
Fish Where The Fish Are

  

On Tuesday, any Tuesday, at around 10 o’clock in the morning, you can probably be found at your desk in your office. Let’s assume again that you are a travel agent. Perhaps you will be speaking on the phone, or drinking a cup of coffee, or perusing a memo or trade publication. In any event, you are where you are supposed to be on any given day, Monday through Friday — at least by the working standards we were taught when we were growing up.

Each Tuesday, while you are at the office, an aerobics class is being conducted down at the local health club. Furthermore, this class is very likely filled — most likely with women who choose not to work for one of many reasons. It is probably safe to assume that these women care about their health and are pro-active. These are the kind of women who go on skiing vacations or who would love to take a cruise to Bermuda or visit a spa in northern California.

Where are you while the Tuesday aerobics class is being conducted? At the office sharing your thoughts about the lack of business you are currently

experiencing. Where are rooms full of prime prospects? At the gym working up a sweat sharing with each other their excitement about taking their next trip.

If you were in the travel business my suggestion would be to get yourself or one of your associates down to the gym. I’m betting that the aerobics classes on Monday and Wednesday are filled with some more action-oriented people. One agent per day makes good sense to me. (This is a classic example of thinking “outside of the box” — a creative term meaning “doing whatever it takes to get the job done.”)

If you or your agents do not have a social flaw, chances are incredibly good that after a week or two of sweating to the oldies, you might share a post workout glass of orange juice with a few of these people and find yourself with an opportunity to introduce your services and lend your professional assis tance the next time they begin globe trotting.

The upside: You develop another profitable client and a possible stream of referral business from a new social network you’ve penetrated.

The downside: If nothing comes of this “crap shoot,” at least you will get yourself in some semblance of shape — something you have been promising yourself since the first beach day in 1993.

These kind of “out-of-the-box” prospecting hot spots exist for every service and product. You simply need to brainstorm and be willing to let go of old prejudices about the “right” places to generate business opportunities.

I dislike the title of this chapter because it seems too obvious . . . so axiomatic. It’s painfully apparent that you won’t meet too many world class surfers waxing their boogie boards in Des Moines, Iowa. You need to creatively discover new places where the prospect action is. If you spend less than two hours per month brainstorming these locations, you are leaving prospects and money for the competition.