Loading So I was at a networking meeting a while back doing my due diligence of face time for the masses when it happened. I had just finished filling up my coffee when I was cornered by a gentleman who has been trying to get me to use his services for quite some time. What he has not realized yet is that 1) I am not in his target market and 2) if I were in his target market he has done more to send me running to his competition than to get me to open up my wallet to him.
Now, on this particular day when he cornered me by the coffee stand I was feeling quite energetic despite the early hour. It was a beautiful day and I was seeing everything in a positive light. However, by the end of my interaction with him I found myself drained and ready to be done with networking for the day.
What did he do that caused such a drastic change in my mood and outlook?
Well, I pondered that very thing on my way to my next meeting for the day and I came up with 3 items.
1) The first words out of his mouth were a sales pitch. And not just any sales pitch, but the same sales pitch that he has spouted on our 3 previous interactions.
2) He talked incessantly about himself for 5 minutes then flippantly asked how I had been.
3) Before I even had a chance to respond he launched into a long winded spout on a political topic that I happen to feel quite strongly about.
Now, you may be asking what is wrong with any of what he did. If so, please refer to the headline of this post before proceeding.
Networking 101 says that the best way to build a relationship with a potential prospect is not to launch into your sales pitch the moment you corner them. Think of it like the dating game.
How far do you think a guy is going to get if the moment he gets into a conversation with a girl he starts telling her how much she needs to go out on a date with him? Considering that he would probably come across as desperate, not very far. That is because we as humans tend to hate being told what we should be doing. In fact, if we have someone tell us what we should be doing, our tendency is to do the exact opposite. However, if there is something that is difficult for us to achieve we are more likely to want it. That is where the dating technique of playing hard to get came from and it works great in the networking arena as well.
Next, we as humans tend to love nothing more than talking about ourselves and yes, I realize that is exactly what he was doing, so what was wrong with that? Well, the problem was that he was trying to prospect me, not the other way. So he should have been asking me questions and getting me engaged in the conversation. One of the keys to sales is to get the prospect talking about themselves because they will begin to slowly give you the information that you need in order to sell them. In addition, if they are talking about themselves they will probably walk away from your conversation saying to themselves, “Wow, that was a really great discussion. I really enjoyed talking to them.” This is because it fulfills a fundamental human need to be heard and understood.
Finally, he brought up a very controversial political topic without first knowing my views. Deals have been won and lost because of this very thing. There is a reason that your mother always told you not to talk about politics and religion when company was over. These topics tend to be very polarizing and if you are on the opposite sides of the issue can potentially do a lot of harm to your developing relationship. Specifically in this instance, the gentleman was talking about something that he very obviously knew little about which caused him to look ignorant, not a good thing to have a potential prospect or referral partner think about you.
In this short interaction the gentleman succeeded in causing me to change my neutral opinion of him to a negative one, ensuring that I will probably avoid him at future meetings. And will I send him business? Probably not, as I have no guarantee that he will treat the people I send to him any differently than he just treated me.
