Let your potential clients talk

Here is a basic truth about life, one you may already know from your years as a private investigator, but one you might perceive differently as an investigator than one who thinks about people and marketing.

People love to talk about themselves. It never ceases to amaze me. When I worked in a hospital public relations department and needed to profile patients from a particular type of service, we never had any problems. They could have had open heart surgery, knee replacement surgery, or been in a horrible car crash so that they ended up in an intensive care unit for months. Someone was always willing to share their experience. People like to talk about themselves. It's their favorite subject.  (Probably why Facebook is so popular.)

As a private investigator, you may encounter the other side of the coin. People who have something to hide and thus are unwilling to talk about themselves, or people they know.

But we're talking about marketing here, and not someone whom you are trying to track down. So use the natural tendency of people to want to talk about themselves.

How? Call a potential client simply for his opinion. Ask a business owner for her advice about which wireless telephone service you should use. Call an attorney and ask if he can help someone you know with a particular type of case, and, if not, can he refer you to someone. Call the insurance fraud examiner and ask if his company is really the right one with which to have a certain type of policy.

I'm not a human resources expert, but I've read that interviewers think that a job interview went best when they, not the job applicant, did most of the talk

It matters less what you want to talk about, but give people a chance to share their expertise and their oppinion.  And be genuinely interested in what your next client really has to say about things.