Getting Down to Business

Last week I posted a poll to see if I was alone in my willingness to give up a large % of my time in scheduled calls to building report.? I was not alone, in fact, over 50% of respondents were willing to give up 30% or more of a scheduled call to building a connection rather than getting straight down to business.

What is getting straight down to business?? Surely building relationships is a major part of business.? Garrison Wynn is famously quoted for ‘People buy from people they trust and they trust people they like’.? ??

If getting down to business is doing the deal.....and to get the deal you have to sell.... and for the customer to buy they have to trust you....and for a customer to trust you, they must like you.... Than getting down to business is spending the time for your customer to like you.

True story, I met someone for the first time about a month ago, he is a Senior Leader and influential decision maker.? This meeting had been put off a few times, and taken over 2 months to get into his calendar. I will be honest, I went into the conversation, slightly intimidated and although all my talking points, facts, references were well prepared, I still had butterflies.

I should not have worried, we connected over the fact that he has a child who is looking to go to Exeter University next year.? Exeter is 15 miles from me and gave us an excellent talking point to build report.?

Once we made the connection, the conversation flowed effortlessly, and although I had used 10 minutes of 30, gushing over the beauty of the Devon life and the horrors of the A303 on a Sunny Summer Fridays, we covered all the key points I had planned and ‘got down to business’ of next steps.

The upshot was that, I had a follow-up question for him and without a meeting or preparation, I was able to text him, get a response and later on that week have a call to answer some of his questions.???

I have written before about my stalker tendencies, and as you know, I make no apologies because those techniques help me find a few topics which I might be able to break the ice with.? In the example above, I lucked out, he mentioned traffic, I mentioned the A303, he then shared his experience driving down the A303 to look around the University.? But even if he had not, his profile had given me some great inroads (no pun intended).

My learning, the time invested in building a connection and being likeable, will pay back in dividends…..and is far more enjoyable than sharing job titles.