"Recycle" On-Profile Prospects. Because not everyone will agree to a meeting the first time you call, be prepared to "recycle" qualified, on-profile prospects. Even if it takes weeks or months to schedule a meeting, it's worth the wait, if you use every contact as an opportunity to:

• Build rapport and win the prospect's confidence. This is a "relationship" business. People like doing business with people they like, who ask important questions and know how to listen.
• Establish yourself as someone worth listening to. Demonstrate your competence in dealing with the prospect's needs and wants, objectives, and concerns. Always have something new and interesting to talk about.
• Learn more about your prospect's personal and business situation. The more leverage you have with prospects and the more you know about their situations, generational cohort, and career goals, the easier it is to set a scheduled meeting.
• Timing is crucial. The on-profile prospect who has no interest in seeing you one month may be wishing you'd call back the next. That's why it's so important to have a steady flow of qualified, on-profile prospects, an effective prospect follow-up system, and to use pre-approach techniques, such as those described in the next few sections, which put you in the right place, at the right time, for the right reasons!

That's what distinguishes marketing from selling, and helps make you better than your competitors in the eyes of your prospects.