Building Informal Relationships

This is primarily for the folks in sales and marketing but “sales” isn’t confined to our professional lives.   The truth of the matter is that whether you are working on a 7 figure deal with a F100 company or getting your co-worker Kevin to help you with a project, you are selling. ("Sales" here is defined as getting someone to do what you want when you don’t have any authority over them, or even when you do but don’t want to use it).

We like to believe that decisions like this in our personal lives and especially in deals between companies are done strictly on merit. But that is simply not true. If it were, golf courses would be empty during the day and the word "schmooze" would lose its place in our vocabulary.

Successful salespeople have an uncanny ability to establish informal relationships with people.

This is critically important. People do not buy from companies. People buy from people.  And all things being equal (and often unequal), they prefer to do business with people they like.  

So how do you do that?  There’s no question that some people have a natural talent.  But this is a trainable skill.  It is a misconception that you need to be a life-of-the-party extravert.  Some of the best relationship builders I’ve met are quiet introverts.  The reason for this is that real relationships are based on depth.  You will not build them by mingling and talking about weather.

And speaking of weather...  In the US, it seems to be in poor taste to get right down to business.  Parties prefer to engage in some small talk first.  More often than not, conversation turns to weather.  This is completely fine on a conference call with multiple participants, but my advise is to avoid this topic like the plague in any 1-1 conversations.  There are two reasons for this:

1. Relationships are personal and you are squandering an opportunity to get personal.
2. Talking about the weather signals that you aren’t interested in the other person.

Luckily, there’s a myriad of other topics that are every bit as acceptable but get you so much closer to your target.  

So how do you break the ice? How do take the conversation into the informal realm? How do you get them to show you their personality? You show them yours first!  You proactively think about offering them something to like about you.  You want them to say "Wow, what a great guy / gal" to themselves at the end of that conversation.  

Lots of topics easily lend themselves to this type of conversation: sports, families, shared work experiences, where you / they are from, travel, vacations, hobbies.  Reveal something about yourself and they will reveal something about themselves.  "Hey how you doing?" "I'm good, working from home today, though.  Just adopted a shelter puppy and helping her adjust to her new home".  BOOM!  You are an awesome person who rescues dogs from shelters and perhaps your interlocutor likes dogs too.  Or perhaps you took your kids to their rugby camp over the weekend, or spent the weekend building a train track. If it's something a bit uncomfortable or a tiny bit embarrassing - even better. Showing vulnerability is a great way to get personal. Perhaps you spent Sunday in bed binge watching House of Cards? … And then ask them about their lives.  And if they reveal something, remember it.  Write it down. Ask them about it next time you talk.  Show sincere interest and feel sincere interest. We care about people who care about us.  But don't expect things to move overnight. Be patient. Different people build relationships at different paces, so you need to have sufficient EQ to move at their pace, but we all do it.