Wednesday, April 14, 2010

How to Win a Free-Lunch Bet

There was a Seinfeld episode about this years ago …

If one of your objectives is to meet face-to-face with a prospect and you are struggling to get them to agree, find a way to make a harmless bet, preferably related to something in your business conversation, and engineer it so you can’t possibly win.

A recent bet with a merchant banker arose out of a conversation “You should chat with so-and-so”.

“OK”, I responded, “I’ll take him out to lunch”.

“You’ll never get him to agree to go to lunch with you!”.

“Wanna bet?”.

I can’t lose this one.

Either I get to take so-and-so to lunch (a winning situation for me), or I fail to persuade so-and-so to lunch with me (in which case I lose the bet and get to take my merchant banker to lunch – a winning situation for me).

Bet your business relationships on the impossible, and win!

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