• Send an article you've written about a specific problem they are experiencing. Keep it short (400-600 words is fine), with bold headlines and your contact information at bottom. Pick a topic that profiles a problem/solution situation that matches your expertise. Include a live client example to make it even more powerful.

• Send a thank you note for any kind of referral, recommendation, tip or new business you receive from a client. Hand written thank you notes are worth a zillion times their weight in gold!

• Produce a newsletter, or purchase a pre-made newsletter for your industry. These are increasingly easy to find on Internet. You can also purchase articles for as little as $15.00 (IdeaMarketers is a fabulous resource for articles of all subjects).

• Offer to give a free, or low cost, 45-minute "lunch-n-learn" presentation for their employees. Choose a topic that matches their interest and your expertise.

• Call and ask for a resource referral you need for another client's project. Your request goes something like this, "I'm working on a project for xyz company. I'm helping them reduce/improve/increase blah, blah, blah. I need a resource for abc and immediately thought of you. Is there someone you can recommend?"

• Ask your favorite client if they can recommend a non-profit organization that needs some volunteer help. • Send a birthday card.

• Send a follow-up survey after your project is complete. Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. If appropriate, include a $10 gift certificate to Starbucks as a thank you for their time.

• Send a note with a link to a website that offers useful information to your client/prospective client.

Imagine being in shoes of your client/prospective client. Would you appreciate receiving an article, note, thank you card or phone call? Of course you would! This is just a starter list. Use it, or create your own ways to be consistent.

Remember saying "Out of sight, out of mind."? If that is true, then I am offering a new saying - "Consistency keeps you in mind at right time."

Once you've dug deeply to uncover symptoms and what happens if they don't fix them, it's finally time to transition your conversation to solution you have to offer. With this caveat - do NOT, under any circumstances, spend more than 1 minute going into detail about how to work with you.

The temptation to go into more detail will be strong. Resist. Here's a rule of thumb to keep in mind. Follow it and you will be following my golden rule: It's Not About You, It's About Them. The rule of thumb is: You are either asking a question or summarizing what they've said.

So to transition your conversation to a solution, you can say something like this (I've used my own business as an example, but this will work equally well for yours):

"So you're looking for a way to stop spending so much time on your marketing and instead get better results with time you do have to spend, is that right?"

Now comes transition...

"If I could show you a way to accomplish that, would you be interested in hearing about it?"

Simple, elegant, and completely permission-based. How often do you think you will hear "Yes!"? Probably 99.9% of time!

So what comes next? Your 30-45 second description of how you can help them, carefully crafted to amplify results they get and minimize mechanics of how you work.

If you say these examples out loud, you'll hear how easy this template is to follow. It's a simple structure for focusing on symptoms that keeps conversation all about them, and makes it easy for you to understand your almost-client's situation in greater depth than you ever have before.

Now it's your turn!