There are steps involved with making prospects and clients comfortable with you. You can't go from, "I have no idea who you are," to "I'm completely comfortable with you and I trust you implicitly" without steps. It just doesn't happen. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Bianca Istvan and I will be discussing the topic of making prospects and clients comfortable with you. Welcome back, Bianca. Bianca: Thank you so much, David. Definitely one of my favorite topics. And please tell us, what does it take to make prospects comfortable with us? David: Yeah, that's sort of a magic key, isn't it? What does it take? Well, I think it takes desire, certainly starts with the desire to want to do it, because a lot of times we're just so focused on selling what it is that we want to sell that we don't really think about that too much. We just think in terms of introducing ourselves and letting them know what we do and hoping that they're going to want to buy it. But so much of that, can never really happen until and unless we get to the point where they're comfortable enough to even want to hear what it is that we have to offer. Bianca: Well, that's absolutely great. And yeah, I definitely agree with you. So who do we need to do this with? David: Pretty much everyone, pretty much every prospect, every client we ever interact with, we need to create a level of comfort. In some of my early training, I talked about sort of four levels, if you picture a target with archery practice it's a series of rings and outside the rings, there's this area outside the target. That I think of as total obscurity. They don't know who you are. They don't know what you do. They have no idea why they should do business with you at all. So that's sort of outside the target. And then the first level inside the target is recognition. They recognize that you're alive. They recognize that you're taking in air on the planet, but they don't know exactly what you do or how you do it, or if they should use you at all. They just recognize you. Okay, I recognize you. So you move from obscurity to recognition. That's sort of the first step. And then after they recognize you, then you can start to move to comfort. Because until I even know who you are, there's no way I'm going to feel comfortable with you. So there's that next level. So you move from obscurity to recognition, and then recognition to comfort. And then from Comfort, you can eventually, if you do your job well and consistently, you can get to loyalty, right? We didn't even talk about loyalty in the topic today, but ultimately that's kind of the goal. And Comfort is one of the steps we need to get through in order to get to any sort of level of customer loyalty. But when we talk about making prospects and clients feel comfortable with us, it really is a process. And in our total market domination training, we talk about different methods of interaction. In other words, we have entry level awareness. So entry level awareness is designed to make someone aware of the fact that we exist and we do what we do. From there, we can then move on to that comfort level awareness, which is designed to expand the relationship a little more. Okay, I know who you are, I know what you do, and now I feel comfortable enough with you to place that first time order with you. And then once that happens, if I deliver well and consistently, and then you order again, and I deliver well and consistently, then eventually that can lead to loyalty. But I think a lot of it goes to recognizing that there are steps involved here. You can't go from, I have no idea who you are, to I'm completely comfortable with you and I trust you implicitly.