What are the different kinds of client meetings any one of us could be having? And how can we have structured business conversations around that?

One scenario is not really a "client" scenario per se. The first instance is that conversation where we're trying to get someone to come along with us as a client.

In the proper business sense, this person is a "prospect" or "potential client or customer" because "clients" are people we have a subsisting business relationship with.

A client has already engaged your services or given you money in the past to solve a problem or provide a product or service to them.

So now that we're clear that we're dealing with a "potential client", what are the kinds of conversations we should engage in to get someone to become our client.

The first of those conversations according to sales theory is called a "prospecting" conversation.

Prospecting is the art of looking for people to talk to.

Those should be people who could be potential customers tomorrow because they have a problem, or are working towards a vision that our product or service could help them with.

How do you find people to talk to in the prospecting stage? You do so by asking a few questions like, "where do my ideal customers hang out?", "what kinds of things are my customers interested in?", "which kinds of people are likely to have a problem that my product or service could solve?".

The answers to these questions will give you clues to where you should start looking for people to talk to.

So let's assume that you sell bags and shoes for ladies on Instagram... how would you go about prospecting? We'll tackle that and more in future posts.