If you have a business and you wanna find international clients,
you probably already know that you need English. And in today's lesson,
I'll teach you the number one skill that you need to contact new clients
confidently.
And you'll also learn three things that you need to
say in those super important. First 10 minutes, you ready? Let's go. Hi,
I'm your English coach, Christina,
and welcome to business English with Christina,
where this week and next week also you're learning how other
entrepreneurs and business owners solved their English problems so they could
grow their business internationally.
And this is the second episode in this special series designed to help you
find new clients in English. Now, if you missed part one, which was all about,
uh, the importance of speaking English, when you have your own business,
you can go and watch that episode with the link that is below this
video and coming up, uh, next week,
actually next Monday, uh, there's a special,
I'm doing a special live webinar to help you find the courage and know
what to say to approach new business contacts. So if you want your invitation to
that webinar, it's free. Um, the link is below,
go over and sign up to my newsletter so that you can get that invitation.
Now,
last time we talked about how your English could be hurting your
business, and of course, how you can fix that because we want, uh, yes,
we want to recognize the problem, but more importantly,
we want to try to fix the problem. Not just feel bad all the time. No. Uh,
all about solutions here. And we talked about a client of mine,
who we called Manuel, um,
who has a lot of clients in the states and who was afraid
to actually work with them over, um, virtual meetings.
And he just was doing all the work by email.
So how did Manuel solve this problem and how can you maybe solve your problem
if you're feeling the same way and you, you know,
prefer to do business by email or chat rather than actually
speaking with your clients and your business contacts? Well, you're gonna start,
like I said,
by focusing on the one important thing that might have the most
impact on your business. And if you wanna start finding new clients,
one of those things is of course conversation.
And if we go a little further,
it's those first 10 minutes of the conversation,
which are so important for making a good impression and establishing a good
business relationship, you know,
last time we talked about the importance of the,
those first moments of your conversation. And we said that, you know,
the end depends on the beginning.
So the way that the result that you.
Want from that conversation does depend a lot on the way that that
conversation starts. And that idea came from an article,
which if you want the full article, uh, you can go over to my blog,
there's a link and you can read it. But in that article,
the author talked about the situation of asking for
directions in French. The author is an English speaker. So like me, um,
in France like me, and he said, you know,
he would co go to people in the street and ask, I don't know, like,
do you know where's the eel tower or something like that? Um,
and the people would just say like, sorry, um,
I don't speak English or they did.
They basically didn't want to help this person.
And he realized that it was because in that first
interaction, he wasn't doing the right thing, which was saying, Bojo like,
just going up and saying hello before asking the
question. And once he started doing that,
like the result of the conversation changed completely,
he was able to get directions. And it was all because of just one little word.
So when we say that those first moments of a conversation
are crucial, like it's not an exaggeration.
It really can make a difference in the result that you get.
So in your first conversation with a, you know,
new client or a potential client, what's the first thing you need to say.
It's very simple. I promise you're gonna be like, Christina's like,
you are just making fun of us. This is so simple,
but really it's something so simple.
Start with like good morning or good afternoon or
hi, it's nice to see you or hello.
How are you today now? Does it sound easy? I mean, like,
even like stupid, too easy where you're just like, okay,
that is ridiculous. Like I know that, yes,
you probably do know that. And I'm sure that you do it in your native language,
but when you are in a situation like you're with a
potential client, so there's, you know, there there's, um,
something important there for you. It's a high stakes conversation.
You're on zoom, it's in English,
you are feeling nervous and we can forget those basic
things that, of course we know, and we know they're important,
but with the pressure and the situation and the stress,
we can forget what to say. And then it's like,
once you realize that now you're stressed because you know that you didn't quite
do the right thing.
And then you're just stressed for the rest of the conversation. And it, I mean,
it's just like, it's all downhill from there.
It's you don't wanna be in that kind of situation.
And you know, when you know the, the right.
Way, let's say the, you know, the, the way to start a conversation confidently.
Yes, it's important for, you know,
establishing a good foundation for that business relationship.
But that's not the only reason it's because when you know exactly how
to start a conversation,
you feel confident about yourself and what you're going to say.
You have phrases that you can practice before to become comfortable
and to feel confident. And then you're not stuck,
like wondering what to say or searching for your words,
because that first little moment, you know exactly what to say,
you've practiced it, you've got it.
And you feel good right from the start.
And that has an impact on the way the rest of the conversation goes.
So after you have, you know, said, hello and greeted your,
your, your potential client here next,
you wanna take a moment to express your gratitude, uh,
because they probably have a very busy schedule, you know, like,
like all of us. Um,
and they've taken a moment out of their day to learn more about you and
your company and what you offer and to see if you can work together and do
business together.
And you simply want to express your thanks
for that. So it's very simple. You can just say,
thank you so much for meeting with me or thank you for taking
the time to speak with me today. Again,
it seems simple because it is simple,
but again, if you're in a stressful situation, you might forget that.
And to be honest,
there are a lot of native speakers who also forget these little
things. So, like I said, it's very simple, but it can make a big difference.
And it can again give you that competitive advantage over,
you know, maybe other businesses, you know,
whose native language is English that you're in competition with. And
if you practice doing this, like, I don't know,
put a note next to your computer or something. Um,
so that you remember to do this and just practice getting that habit it'll
become easier and help you feel confident and make a difference in those
first few seconds. Now, going back to our story about Manuel,
who was learning to, uh, do business with his American clients over, um,
virtual meetings. Now,
one of the things that he also had to learn was that it,
it wasn't all about speaking English.
It was about communicating the right way in a business situation.
And a lot of people, you know,
think that they need to just go directly into the business conversation and they
don't take just a, a little minute or two to,
to get to know the other person or to, um,
to show that you value the other person and you are interested in them in what
they're doing. And this can be very simple as well, like maybe, um,
to prepare for your meeting.
You take a minute and you just go and you look at your client's profile on
LinkedIn to see what their, what they've been doing recently.
Or you go and look at their company's website to see what news they have or
what projects they're working on recently.
And then you can use that to just find one simple
question that you can ask to your client. For example,
if you see that they've launched, um, their, on their LinkedIn profile,
they talk about a new product that they are launching. You can say, oh,
I saw on LinkedIn that you're getting ready to launch a new product.
How's that going? Or maybe on their company website, they posted something,
uh, some information that is re relevant to, to their clients.
And then you could say,
I noticed your company recently posted that interesting article on
cyber security for companies. That was a really interesting article.
And if you, you know, maybe you were,
you saw on social media that the person was traveling to a business event,
or maybe when you were organizing the meeting. Um, they said, oh,
uh, I, after I returned for my business trip, we can meet ask them about that.
For example, you could say, oh,
I know last month you were at CES in Las Vegas. How did that go?
And it's like I said, it just takes a few extra minutes of preparation,
but it can make a huge difference on the impression that you give to your
client. Now, people that, that I've worked with, people like Manuel,
one of the things that they do after they learn these,
these expressions and these techniques it's to practice so that it becomes
easier for you so that it becomes a habit so that you feel comfortable doing it.
You can, you know, of course do this just by yourself, even better,
get a friend to help you,
someone to role play so that you become comfortable doing it with another
person. And maybe you're thinking like, okay, that's great. Yeah. But I,
but like, I'm not ready. I'm, uh, I don't have the level. I'm,
I'm just, it's not the right time. And I've seen a lot of people say that,
but I've also seen a lot of people say that kind of like,
feel that fear and then say, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
I'm gonna go outta my comfort zone. I'm gonna try,
I'm gonna make a lot of mistakes and I'm gonna feel really embarrassed
sometimes, but that's part of the process of learning and improving.
And you have to embrace that,
but you've got to be willing to take that first step.
And I know that if you are running a business, going out of your comfort zone.
Taking that first step, like I know that you're used to doing that.
So I have no worries. Let's say, um,
in your ability to do that, like, I know you can do this,
but you just have to just do it. Like they like the brand Nike, like they say,
just do it.
So if you want to work on that and work on getting to
that, getting that courage and getting to those next steps. And like I said,
as you saw today, it's a lot easier than you imagine.
Go ahead and subscribe to my newsletter.
I'll put the link down below so that you can get your invitation to this
masterclass on Monday,
where we're going to go more into detail about the exact things that you can say
so that you can feel confident and you can start doing this. And like,
I always say, if you don't use it,
you lose it. So here's your chance to use some of this English today,
share with us one time in your life that you did something that
previously you were afraid to do it. So something where you,
you were afraid and then you decided, all right, I'm gonna do it.
And just tell us that story because that, like,
I'm sure that that is going to be a very inspiring story for me.
And for all of the other people in our community,
you can put it in the comments below the video or over on the blog.
And if this lesson was helpful for you, I would love to note,
and there are three ways you can tell me, of course,
thumbs up and subscribe to my channel on YouTube so I can continue making
business English lessons for you, go over to, um,
the blog post, sign up for the newsletter.
So you can come to the master class on Monday,
and you can watch this next lesson about how to introduce yourself in
English. All right. Thanks a lot for learning with business English,
with Christina. And I look forward to seeing you in the must,
the master class on Monday. It's not easy to say. All right. See you guys. Bye.