Talk to Strangers: How Everyday, Random Encounters Can Expand Your Business, Career, Income, and Life by David Topus Page B
Authors: David Topus
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your business by expanding your network, your short-term goal is to determine whether this particular individual’s position, personal/professional network, or knowledge can be useful to you.
Qualifying your new friend and determining whether he or she represents an opportunity for you is an essential step in successful random connecting. Use your goals to determine whether it will be beneficial to pursue the conversation. After gauging the person’s willingness to engage, and starting with neutral questions or statements, you want to get to the meat of the matter: What does this person do for a living? Whom can this person connect me to? And is there something here that I can leverage for our mutual benefit?
You’ll want to assess quickly whether this individual is someone of influence. If you are selling a product or service, you want to determine whether your new connection is a decision maker with buying authority and money to spend. If you are seeking a job, you will want to assess whether this person has influence over hiring or can introduce you to people who do. You will have a profile—either formally or in your mind—of the type of individual who represents your best potential lead.
Time is your greatest ally, as well as a precious, finite resource, so you want to spend it where it will do you the most good. There’s an old story of an elevator salesman who was having a terrible time getting customers. He was sure he was doing everything right and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t making sales. “I’m very professional when I talk to my prospects,” he said. “I know my products very well, so I think I am very believable when I discuss them. I listen well, and my presentation is very engaging. I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
He finally gave up trying to figure it out himself and decided to ask his manager to spend a day with him in his territory making sales calls. Wanting to help in any way he could, the manager agreed to go along and see if there was something this eager but desperately unsuccessful elevator salesperson was doing wrong.
It didn’t take any longer than their first appointment for the manager to identify the problem. The salesperson was calling on owners of one-story buildings!
The lesson here? Knowing your ideal customer or target contact’s profile is crucial in making effective random connections. If the person isn’t in your sweet spot, you will be having a completely different conversation than if that person represents the pot o’ gold you’ve been dreaming of.
My best type of random connection target is an executive in a professional services or business-to-business company who uses external resources (read “consultants”) to help improve their company’s performance, especially revenue growth. So after breaking the ice and establishing some rapport, I guide the conversation toward their line of work—sometimes going there immediately and directly, sometimes a little more slowly, depending on how the other person is responding. If the person is open to conversation, I ask the million-dollar question: “So what line of work are you in?” And I ask it sooner rather than later. If the new connection seems at all reticent, I might build the rapport a little more before focusing on the outcome. But I know what I want to know about the other person, and I try to get there as fast as I can, while always ensuring the person feels validated and respected regardless of his or her leveragability.
I uncovered opportunity quickly on a recent subway ride. A simple comment of mine opened the door to a high-potential conversation with a person who appeared ready to exit the train at the next stop. I noticed that this individual was carrying a backpack featuring a logo from a company I was interested in approaching. After a quick exchange about the fact that the air-conditioning on the train wasn’t working very well, I directed
Qualifying your new friend and determining whether he or she represents an opportunity for you is an essential step in successful random connecting. Use your goals to determine whether it will be beneficial to pursue the conversation. After gauging the person’s willingness to engage, and starting with neutral questions or statements, you want to get to the meat of the matter: What does this person do for a living? Whom can this person connect me to? And is there something here that I can leverage for our mutual benefit?
You’ll want to assess quickly whether this individual is someone of influence. If you are selling a product or service, you want to determine whether your new connection is a decision maker with buying authority and money to spend. If you are seeking a job, you will want to assess whether this person has influence over hiring or can introduce you to people who do. You will have a profile—either formally or in your mind—of the type of individual who represents your best potential lead.
Time is your greatest ally, as well as a precious, finite resource, so you want to spend it where it will do you the most good. There’s an old story of an elevator salesman who was having a terrible time getting customers. He was sure he was doing everything right and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t making sales. “I’m very professional when I talk to my prospects,” he said. “I know my products very well, so I think I am very believable when I discuss them. I listen well, and my presentation is very engaging. I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
He finally gave up trying to figure it out himself and decided to ask his manager to spend a day with him in his territory making sales calls. Wanting to help in any way he could, the manager agreed to go along and see if there was something this eager but desperately unsuccessful elevator salesperson was doing wrong.
It didn’t take any longer than their first appointment for the manager to identify the problem. The salesperson was calling on owners of one-story buildings!
The lesson here? Knowing your ideal customer or target contact’s profile is crucial in making effective random connections. If the person isn’t in your sweet spot, you will be having a completely different conversation than if that person represents the pot o’ gold you’ve been dreaming of.
My best type of random connection target is an executive in a professional services or business-to-business company who uses external resources (read “consultants”) to help improve their company’s performance, especially revenue growth. So after breaking the ice and establishing some rapport, I guide the conversation toward their line of work—sometimes going there immediately and directly, sometimes a little more slowly, depending on how the other person is responding. If the person is open to conversation, I ask the million-dollar question: “So what line of work are you in?” And I ask it sooner rather than later. If the new connection seems at all reticent, I might build the rapport a little more before focusing on the outcome. But I know what I want to know about the other person, and I try to get there as fast as I can, while always ensuring the person feels validated and respected regardless of his or her leveragability.
I uncovered opportunity quickly on a recent subway ride. A simple comment of mine opened the door to a high-potential conversation with a person who appeared ready to exit the train at the next stop. I noticed that this individual was carrying a backpack featuring a logo from a company I was interested in approaching. After a quick exchange about the fact that the air-conditioning on the train wasn’t working very well, I directed
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