There are several ways to do this. There are some low leverage but important strategies and there are some extremely high leverage strategies.

Some low leverage but important strategies to use are as follows:

- Make it very clear in all your marketing materials who you serve, what problems you solve and what results you deliver. Chances are the people who contact you will be "pre-qualified" and will be in your target market and will have problems you can solve.

- Have testimonials in all your marketing materials which show results your clients have achieved from working with you. These testimonials will help you speed through the credibility part of the sales cycle.

- When a potential client contacts you, find a "reason why" they should do business with you now rather than later. You can either uncover a "reason why" by asking powerful questions or you can provide a "reason why", for example, a time-limited offer.

There are also some extremely high leverage strategies, which will help you get to a "yes" quicker as people will be "pre-sold" before they contact you. With these strategies you can dramatically accelerate your sales and the growth of your business.

The first high leverage strategy is to encourage others to give you referrals. I will illustrate just how powerful referrals can be with my own recent experience.

A few months ago I needed a new web designer. To find one I could have done several things, including:

- do a Google search for "web designers"

- ask someone whose opinion I trust.

Searching Google is a time-consuming and risky approach. How would I know if the person I found was reliable and could do a good job? I chose not to go the Google path for the obvious risks.

Instead I asked Bob Serling, my trusted marketing mentor, who he would recommend as a web designer. Bob referred me to Steve who he'd been working with for over six years. As it turned out, Steve fitted my criteria perfectly. And because of Bob's recommendation, I was effectively "pre-sold" on Steve. I contacted Steve, and once we covered a few administration details and agreed on the price, etc., I became Steve's client. Steve didn't have to sell me at all as I was pre-sold, so I virtually said "yes" to Steve immediately.

So the question is how do you get client referrals? There is a whole series of strategies around getting referrals, and a good place to start is to simply to ask for them.

But there is a strategy that's even more powerful than client referrals. This strategy will, all by itself, naturally generate a continuous stream of referrals and clients. This is the most powerful and most highly leveraged strategy for getting to a "yes".

If you are serious about getting to a "yes" quicker - get yourself known. The faster you can get known, the faster you will get to a "yes" with lots of clients. People will automatically assume you must be good at what you do and they will be naturally attracted to you and want to do business with you.

Put the time into implementing these strategies and into getting yourself known and the "yeses" will flow!

(c) Tessa Stowe, Sales Conversation, 2006. You are welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete, unaltered (including the "about the author" info at the end) and all links made live.