On my way to the locker room at the fitness club, I passed by a gentleman who was looking dressed for work, standing behind a table. The table had a banner draped down from it that said something like "XYZ Financial." On the table he had a bowl of bananas and several bottles of water. As people walked by, he would ask, "Would you like a free bottle of water?"

Gosh, I hope you pictured yourself walking past that table and seeing some guy in a suit at the fitness club asking you that. What would you say? Let me tell you what I observed. I observed people responding just like I did, "No thanks." Why were most of the people there weary about stopping and accepting the free water?

Before I come right out and answer that, I want to take you with me on a visit to the Costco warehouse. Imagine that it's Saturday at noon. Once we make our way over to the food section we see vendor after vendor sampling their chimichangas, their protein bars, their cheesecake, and even their bottled water. Do we hesitate for even an instant from taking those samples? Of course not.

Interestingly enough we have no trouble accepting the hand-outs from the Costco vendors for the same reason that we refuse the hand-outs from the guy in the suit at the fitness club. We know what they're selling. When someone is selling water and he offers you a free sample of water, it makes sense. The sales person is giving you a taste of what he's selling. But when some is selling financial services and he offers you a bottle of water or a banana, it seems disingenuous because it feels like he is trying to trick you into talking to him.

So get this, after I finished my workout I noticed that someone else had set up a table to sell something. At this table they weren't giving anything away, but they did have signs on their table informing people about their youth basketball camps and mens basketball leagues. People weren't only stopping to pick up brochures, they were whipping out credit cards to sign up for the camps.

Now part of what was going on there is a no brainer. The basketball sales people understood that the prospects most hungry for their service go to fitness clubs. By setting up their table at the fitness club, they assisted their prospects to sign up for a service they had probably been meaning to sign up for but just hadn't for various reasons. In other words, the basketball sales people fit into the environment.

Am I saying that the financial guy shouldn't set up a table at a fitness club? No, but I am saying that he needs to think more about the prospects he is standing in front of and how to give them something they want, when it comes to financial services. he needs to ask himself questions like, "What is every person who walks into a fitness club obviously concerned about?" Then he could play to that common ground.

If it were me, I'd ditch the banner with "XYZ Financial" and get one that said, "The Easiest Financial Exercise Few People Actually Do." On the table I'd have several free reports, for example: "The Easiest Financial Exercise Few People Do," "The 5 Healthiest Financial Choices for Families," and "Can Healthy Living Actually Affect Your Financial Portfolio?"

I'd also ditch the nice suit in this situation (and believe me, I truly love wearing my nice suits) and try fitting in with my prospects by wearing some shorts, sneakers and a T-shirt that said something to fit in with the environment and my marketing for that day. For example: fitness success n. - not waiting to be skinny to start an exercise plan. Then just below that, I'd put something like this: Financial Success n. - not waiting to be rich to develop a plan.

When people walked by, I would simply ask if they'd like a free report on the easiest financial exercise few people do. My contact information would be on that report, and once they came over to get a free report I could over them my other reports in exchange for their email address or phone number.

One thing is certain, the people who would stop for that free report would be actual prospects. They would be intrigued by the financial exercise that few people ever do. They would want to know if they were doing it, and my chances of starting a dialog with them would be far greater than with someone who stopped by for a banana because her two year-old was hungry and wanted a banana.

I'm sure you've heard that the average person is exposed to some 3,000 marketing messages a day. That's hard for me to believe, but even if the average person is exposed to only one tenth that many marketing messages, one has to start filtering. In risk management, filtering is a technique used to eliminate ideas that are less important than others. A great way for prospects to filter out less important marketing messages is to ask the questions, "Was there integrity to that message?" "Did that message feel congruous with the messenger?" "Can I benefit from that message/offer?"

Keep in mind that you and your message/offer will immediately be filtered out if your prospects answer yes to even one of those questions. One thing is certain, if you're going to rent space somewhere and spend a few hours of your time trying to generate prospects, you're better off offering people something that coincides with what you are selling. The secret to generating prospects is in taking the time to figure out who your ideal prospects are and then developing a plan to appeal to those prospects. The truth is, it's actually rather simple. But just because it's simple doesn't mean that it's easy.