Talk to Strangers: How Everyday, Random Encounters Can Expand Your Business, Career, Income, and Life (13 page)

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Authors: David Topus

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Chapter 22

If Nothing There, Catch and (Respectfully) Release

As anyone who has ever gone fishing knows, sometimes what you catch is the wrong kind of fish, too small, or otherwise undesirable. In that case, you throw the fish back in the water. . . hopefully without tearing its mouth out with the hook!

Even though we make a point of exploring every possible way to leverage a new connection, sometimes there’s just nothing there—no matter how hard we try to find it. We discussed earlier the importance of knowing the profile of your best prospects and seeking them out, as opposed to those whose role you will not be able to leverage. So what do you do when you apply your brilliant random encounter skills to connect with someone only to determine that person will be of absolutely no benefit to you? Of course you have the choice to continue the conversation if you want to. After all, this might be the beginning of a wonderful friendship—or even your future life partner.

But if you’re random connecting for professional or career purposes, and especially if there are other potential contacts nearby who could represent the opportunity for which you’ve waited a lifetime, you might be best served by bringing the first conversation to a polite conclusion and moving on to the next.

Whatever you’d said up to that point, or whatever your opening question might have been, you can with the same degree of enthusiasm simply let the person know it was a pleasure meeting him or her, that you learned something, and that you wish him or her well. And do it all with a smile and sincerity.

It’s like fishing for trout but catching blowfish. You are going to throw the blowfish back into the water, but the blowfish might say, “I know you are fishing for trout, so you have no interest in me, but before you throw me back into the lake, can’t you at least tell me you like my gills?”

Chapter at a Glance

Not every random encounter represents a professional or career opportunity.

You always have the option of establishing a friendship when there isn’t something there to enhance your professional life.

If there are other connections to be made nearby, refocus your energy there.

Always be polite and respectful when parting ways.

SECTION III

Leveraging the Connection

Although random connecting requires that we encounter complete strangers and engage them in meaningful conversation, this process isn’t just about meeting people and talking to them. It’s about making connections that you can develop into mutually rewarding relationships.

Sometimes that reward comes in the form of money. Sometimes in the form of access to someone or something. Sometimes it’s in information we glean from our new association. And sometimes it’s all of those.

Many people strike up conversations with strangers. In fact, from my observation it’s happening all across the world, all day, every day. And those random meetings likely entail some very interesting discussions. But what has the potential to become a highly profitable connection is all too often left at merely a random exchange. What happens next is up to you.

Chapter 23

Map the Road to Opportunity

A quick conversation, a fun exchange, or a single shared moment. How many times have you met someone, either while traveling, at a party, at a bar, or in the coffee shop, and left it at simply what it was: a pleasant, perhaps even interesting, one-time conversation?

Now imagine the possibilities that might have materialized had you explored a little deeper, discovered a basis for staying in touch, and followed up with a communication that kept the relationship going and the opportunity alive. Those random connections may very well have changed your life in some significant way.

Bottom line, random connecting is about turning your new relationship into opportunity—something productive for both you
and
your new association. It’s of course completely fine to just make friends, and everyone you meet doubtlessly has some value to you and you to them. However, turning random encounters into profitable business relationships is the goal—and that means an out come, a purpose, and an intention.

The difference between someone who likes to meet people and someone who turns random meetings into relationships that materialize into something of great consequence—a bigger bank account, access to people of influence, new insights or knowledge—is that successful random connectors invest the time and effort to follow up, stay in touch, and cultivate the relationship. It’s the difference between collecting business cards and gathering business
connections
.

This person might buy something from you, or he or she may lead you to someone who can. At the very least, this new connection could open your mind to something new and worthwhile that will ultimately add to your life or your net worth. But you can’t walk into a bank and explain to the teller that you want to deposit the conversation you had with a stranger, nor can you pay your bills with a conversation, even though it might be leading you in that direction. Random connecting has the ultimate goal of turning the new relationship into an outcome, ideally, a tangible one.

As you will see in the following case study of a random encounter, the willingness to invest effort and energy in the follow-up resulted in a desired outcome of benefit and value to both parties.

CASE STUDY: Staying in touch and cultivating a random connection led to a huge career and life-changing opportunity for a recent college grad.

Stephen B. was 23 years old and a recent college graduate when a random encounter on a flight from New York—and some very skillful follow-up—set him on a lucrative and unanticipated career path. As Stephen tells it:

I was flying home and found myself seated in the last row of the flight. The woman next to me was a standby passenger and had rushed onto the plane just before they shut the doors. I could tell she was a businessperson by the way she was dressed and the fact that she carried a briefcase; since I was in “career mode,” she immediately caught my interest.

Shortly after takeoff, she began flipping through magazine after magazine and tearing out items of interest. I happened to be reading
GQ
. We started talking about what we enjoyed about our respective magazines and what I thought about men’s fashion. Then the conversation turned to what we each did for a living, and I discovered that she was in the commercial real estate industry, specializing in high-end fashion retailers.

I became more and more intrigued as I asked about her business and began to be able to truly see myself in that industry. I finally worked up the courage to ask for her business card. The plane was landing by this time; I was going to be getting off, while she was continuing on. I said that I would be interested in coming to see her to learn more about her business, and she seemed receptive to that suggestion.

We traded e-mails over the busy holiday period. I initially got in touch with her to tell her how much I enjoyed our conversation and referred to something she had said about the challenges of fitting the right retailer to the right location. I made a suggestion about it that she must have liked, because she replied in a positive way. We continued to exchange e-mails and one voice mail about the possibility of a trip to her company headquarters. I researched her company and the commercial real estate industry as a whole in between our exchanges. I became increasingly interested, thinking this might be a great way to combine my passion for sales and fashion.

About a month after that first meeting on the plane, I drove to Birmingham to meet this woman and members of her team on a purely exploratory visit. As it turned out, this meeting led to a job offer, which I decided to take. It worked out fabulously; I got transferred all around the country, helping to manage various projects for the company. One of those trips even led me to reconnect with an old girlfriend who ended up becoming my wife.

I stayed with the firm for five years. If I hadn’t met this woman on the plane, and followed up with e-mails and a visit to her company headquarters, I would not have found both the career—and woman—that I love so much and that changed my life forever.

Based on your intended goal—to sell your company’s products, your professional services, yourself into a new job, or some such profitable endeavor—you will at some point need to determine whether, in fact, there is a pot o’ gold at the end of that road, or at least if there is a good chance of it. This might happen weeks or even months (for big deals, maybe even years) after the first encounter. But it’s why you’re in it, and you want to leverage your random encounter into a profitable relationship as quickly as you can.

Not every encounter will materialize into a profitable or productive relationship. But if you don’t keep an outcome in mind during your conversation, and don’t put in the effort to follow up, you surely won’t monetize or optimize the potential of your new association.

Depending on how rapidly the conversation progresses, you might even be able to identify the opportunity during that first encounter (as Stephen did). In other cases—and so as not to seem
overly
ambitious (imagine that!)—you might soft sell in the conversation and save your business proposal for a second or third interaction. Rather than immediately addressing your offerings, you can keep the conversation on the level of an interpersonal relationship in this case, holding back on your value statements and instead just getting to know each other. But in any case, effective follow-up can transform a pleasant exchange into a profitable encounter.

Chapter at a Glance

Pleasant conversations with strangers don’t typically change lives.

The goal of a random connector is to monetize or optimize the connection.

The ultimate value of a random encounter is directly related to how well you follow up.

Some connections manifest quickly; others take a longer time.

Chapter 24

Build Your Momentum and Credibility With a Follow-up

Staying on your new acquaintance’s radar is the priority after a first encounter, because time is never on your side. If there is something you want the other party to do—give you the name of someone influential, send you a key piece of information that you referenced during your initial encounter, or, most significantly, meet or talk with you again—you must remain fresh on that person’s mind. Even in the best of random encounters—those that involve a fun, exciting, interesting exchange that’s full of promise and potential—the impact
will
fade over time if you do not keep it alive. In addition, the anonymity that’s inherent in random interactions creates enthusiasm that is situational—and that can therefore dissipate rapidly if you don’t act right away. And the importance of following up quickly connects directly to the degree of prominence and influence the other person has. Senior executives have short access windows. As you go down the food chain or toward less influential people or lower yield opportunities, following up is still necessary but relatively less time critical.

Successful random connectors move rapidly to get back in touch with the new acquaintance; they’re aware that to wait is to allow them to either forget the encounter or to dismiss the interaction as fleeting and inconsequential. There’s also the question of credibility issue at play, as the other party may frequently wonder:
Is this person legitimate or a flake? Was this person just caught up in the excitement of a random encounter, or does this person have something worthwhile to offer? Is this person who he or she says? If it takes this person this long to circle back with me, how important could our conversation really be to him or her?
You don’t want your new association wondering about the legitimacy of your initial encounter and taking too much time to contact them allows those questions to trickle into their mind. The Latin phrase
tempus fugit
, which mean “time flies,” surely applies here—and it never works in favor of the random connector.

The good news is that following up and staying in touch has never been easier than it is today. You can send a short e-mail saying hello again and referencing the initial conversation or leave a voice mail with a similar message within hours or days after the first meeting. Approaching the situation in this way avoids putting your new connection on the spot, and these approaches are not overly ambitious. They simply are the difference between meeting someone standing in line at the supermarket but never getting a name and meeting someone at the supermarket who owns a company, getting contact info, and sending a follow-up e-mail that leads to a meeting with you the following week. Scenario 1 won’t mean much; scenario 2 could change your life.

There are questions or statements you can make at the end of a first encounter that will set the stage for following up and allow you to keep the connection going. Examples include:

Can we exchange cards?

What’s your e-mail address?

May I give you a call when you’re back in your office and talk with you more?

When is a good time to circle back with you?

Are you available to get together for lunch in the next few weeks?

Would it be all right if I send you an invitation to connect on LinkedIn?

Can you give me the name and contact info (phone number, e-mail, etc.) of that person you mentioned, and is it all right if I use your name when I contact him (or her)? Or better yet: Can you give me an introduction?

Would you be willing to take a look at a proposal for (whatever you were talking about)?

Can I send you my resume?

Can we get together again? When?

Depending on what you and your new connection discuss and agree to in your initial conversation, you will want to follow up appropriately. Sometimes it’s just to build the relationship and keep the communication alive; sometimes your goal is to advance the content of the conversation. Following up could be sending a short e-mail saying that you enjoyed meeting the person, or it might be sending correspondence with some information relevant to what you discussed, such as a link to a website or article. It could even be sending a more complete recap of your discussion that’s designed to set the stage for further contact and interaction focused on a specific outcome. Voice mail is also a great way to further personalize the follow-up, since your voice and personality can come through. In all cases, conform your follow-up to make it relevant to the conversation and designed to keep the opportunity alive.

Table 24.1
lists some things you can reference or say in your follow-up to the initial encounter that enable you to optimize and monetize your new connection.

Table 24.1
Match your follow-up to the person’s initial level of interest

If the conversation was. . .	Your follow-up should be. . .
Unstructured without a specific focus or direction	Designed to build the relationship and provide the basis for staying in touch, with no particular outcome in mind other than that. Examples include simple phrases such as “Nice meeting you and enjoyed our conversation” and “It was great fun talking with you, and I look forward to more enjoyable conversations in the future.”
Focused and had a specific direction but didn’t end with a clear next step	Designed to build the relationship, cultivate the opportunity, and suggest a next step that will move you toward an outcome. After a sentence or two of polite reference to the meeting (see above), you would direct your comments toward the productive outcome by starting with a comment such as, “In our conversation we talked about (reference his or her areas of need) and how I might be able to assist. I am wondering if we could talk again, either via phone or in person, and explore the possibilities in more detail.” Or you could start with, “When we met, you shared some interesting thoughts about your goal to (reference specific goal). I thought you would enjoy the attached article about that very subject. Let me know what you think, and let me know if we can get together again to discuss it in more detail.”
Very focused with a specific direction and a clearly understood next step	Designed to keep the momentum moving toward that next step, while reinforcing your role and ability to deliver value. After a sentence or two of polite reference to the meeting (see first box above), you want to restate the key parts of his or her comments, explain specifically how you will make a difference, and then confirm the next step as you discussed it during your initial encounter. You want to use comments such as, “The position you are seeking to fill in your department will be critical in helping the company achieve its long-term growth goals. My experience and skills will enable me to hit the ground running and make an immediate impact. I will call you next Wednesday as agreed and will have the information you requested ready for you at that time.”

The journey from initial encounter to monetized relationship requires that you focus, expend energy and time, and always have an outcome in mind. If there’s something you want at the end of that road, it’s your job to map the territory, check the route, and get there as quickly as possible.

Sometimes you will have made a friend from your initial encounter, in which case a cordial follow-up with will be highly appropriate. But if you’ve encountered an opportunity that can manifest in something of specific and measurable worth, you will want to keep the focus on whatever the goal is: a job interview, a chance to give an estimate on providing your services, an actual assignment, a sale, access to a third party who is of interest and value to you, or whatever the opportunity may be.

We all want friends, of course, and we all want to meet interesting people. But the ultimate purpose of a random connection is to monetize the encounter in some way. You deliver value in some way; your new association rewards you in return. Your ability to cultivate your new relationship will be the difference between expanding your business, your career, your checking account, and your life or just making a friend.

Chapter at a Glance