Warm Market and Strangers

Can strangers be part of your warm market? If you live in even a decent sized town, you have a never ending supply of strangers that you can see every day. The so called "3 foot rule" says you should talk to all of the people you come in contact with.

If you don't mind striking up a conversation with strangers, it that a good idea? I think not. The biggest problem with this '3 foot' approach is that it's a huge waste of time. The vast majority of people you come in contact with are not going to be interested in what you have. And you have to spend a lot of time to find out if they're interested (assuming they'll talk to you). Since they're strangers, you don't know anything about them and won't have a clue if they are interested in your business (much less a home based business in general).  Furthermore, you are a stranger to them.

To me, this is a tremendous waste of time. For all the time you spend doing that, the time would be better off spent talking to interested or pre-qualified leads on the phone. The only time the '3 foot rule' might make sense would be if you were at a network marketing convention or home business expo.