Brian shares an idea he heard from a friend on his recent business trip about working with ideal prospective clients.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OA_429iXaQ

Transcription

You've got to catch them before you clean them.

Hi, I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I heard a great talk from a friend of mine named Gary. And he was discussing the process of bringing on partners onto his business. And the temptation that happens a lot. And this isn't just with partners, you could use the same analogy when you're dealing with customers that you're looking to bring in.

Whether you're looking to bring in patients to your doctor's office, it doesn't matter what it is, is the same thing applies.

So often we're looking for an ideal. And a lot of times, you know, as a person that's a strategist, I tried to get my clients and partners and people I'm doing business with to focus on the ideal.

There's a big importance of focusing on the ideal, the ideal customer, the ideal client, the ideal patient, what have you. By focusing on the ideal, you're going for the top, you're going for the person that's going to work best, it's a best-case scenario situation.

When you start making that switch, it's really great.

But at the same time, you may get caught in this little trick in your brain, which is that you start thinking that the ideal is real, and the ideal isn't real, the ideal is ideal for a reason, it's ideal is in a perfect world. This is what I would go after that and you don't necessarily need to settle for just the plain, perfect ideal, what you do is you have a point at which there's a minimum on which they have to meet.

But you include allowing a whole lot of differences in that you have to because if you don't, you'll go crazy in trying to look for the perfect customer, the perfect partner, and so forth.

And I just love this line that Gary said. He said, and I'm sure it's an old saying I'm sure you can find it in a million different places. But it came to him and he was using it. As he applied this, I thought it was really it was really great, because it's a fishing term.

You know, if you're talking about fishing, you've got to catch them before you can clean them, you're not going to be able to clean the fish up and get it ready to eat until you've caught it.

Don't try to change everybody to be your ideal right out of the gate. Don't you want them to be a certain way in the long run. But a whole lot of that is going to require training or education, or information or motivation or what have you to be able to get them to go from point A to point B.

Don't try and look for point B right off the bat your problem, you should look for it. But you're probably going to find someone more than less than perfect. If that makes sense.

You have to catch them before you clean them.

Simple idea. Not so simple to incorporate into your life because we were always looking for a perfect situation. We're always looking to fix people before we've started a relationship with them.

You got to start that relationship first, then you can fix them in every way possible over time. If you're patient, and you give it time, and you let them come to you in a sense.

So hopefully that's helpful to you. I've got strategies that can help you expand your business and overcome competition. It's my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook. com. It's all I got for tonight.