The last time I flew on a plane to Las Vegas I’m pretty sure the pilot was following a checklist before we took off.
Pilots need to be methodical because aviation laws demand you must follow a set procedure.
A chef has a recipe. He needs to follow his recipe every night because the diners expect a consistent meal.
The surgeon follows a set routine before an operation. Each step is methodically followed. She cannot skip a step or change the order of the operation. She needs to follow established best practice to give the patient the best chance.
Have you noticed that when something is REALLY important someone is following a SYSTEM to get a reliable, predictable result?
Now your client flow is NOT life threatening… so no one is making sure you have a system. There is no policeman ready to charge you with negligence.
But to you and your family your workflow IS important.
Do you have a system?
Is the selling system you are using the very best it could be?
Probably not.
According to the Architects Marketing System™ you should be taking five actions before you meet a prospective client at their site.
Why five?
Because following each step in order has an impact. One step is to send a pre-meeting questionnaire. This does five important things:
- Makes the potential client invest time and effort into the process. They need to feel they have invested time (at least) so they too have something to lose if they walk away.
- Arms you with valuable intelligence.
- Shows that you are organized and that you follow a process
- Is an extra touch point. Research tells us the more touches the more clients will trust and like us
- Forces the client to make some decisions in order to answer the questions before you meet.
These are just a few of the reasons you should send a questionnaire.
Sending a pre-meeting questionnaire is just one of the steps we recommend for an architect to have as a part of their marketing process.
In fact, we’ve developed a sketch giving an overview of a marketing system for an architect.
This is the same system we teach inside the Architects Marketing Academy.
To get the flowchart, click here:
Download: The Architects Marketing System Flowchart
I think your marcketing lesson are most important!