Starting and Ending Conversations

Starting up a conversation

Once you have been introduced to someone or to a group of people, the salesperson in you must be tied up in chains and gagged except that you can ask a number of questions that show your interest in the contacts that you meet, and that allow you to stimulate and keep the conversation flowing. Here are some examples:

·        How are you acquainted with the host of today's event?

·        What do you do for a living?

·        What do you do when you are not working hard for your living?

·        How would I know if someone I was talking to someone who is the ideal referral for you? How would you prefer that I introduce them to you?  – I have given you this one already but I have a referral mindset and its worth repeating! – use it!!

·        Who do you know that is present at this event? o   Would you mind introducing me to Mr. Jones / Mrs. Smith a little later?

·        Hi, I hope I’m not bothering you. I don’t really know anyone here and I’ll get strange looks if I start talking to myself. It would be much better for me and my reputation if I was seen talking to you. Would you mind?

What ever you do, do not oversell or even hard sell your service or product in these networking situations as this is considered to be inappropriate and certainly will kill any pleasant conversation. If the discussion is tending towards requiring you to sell your service or product rather stop the conversation at that point and make an arrangement to call the contact and set up an appointment to go over everything in a more business orientated environment.

Ending the conversation

I have already shown you that you can terminate a conversation with someone whom you find irritating by disagreeing with what they say. You will, however, also need to know how to politely terminate a pleasant conversation so that you can move on to meet additional contacts in that time that has been made available to you. If you make your exit well, you can get back to your new contact at a later date and they will not consider you to be a disagreeable type who left the conversation rather rudely.

If you and your contact have had a beneficial discussion and you would like to reengage in further talks at a later stage you should always ask your new contact for permission to stay in touch. If you haven't already done so you can offer your business card and ask for theirs in exchange. Before you leave your contact and the discussion you should always recap on what you have agreed to do, if anything, for your contact. Write these points of agreement down. Follow this agreement up with a timely delivery. If their business card has their e-mail address printed on it, you could send a synopsis of yourself, your company and the products and services on offer even if no specific requests were made during discussions. Send this as something for your contact to ‘keep on file’ and as a commitment from you to ‘keep in touch’.

Another subtle way to terminate a conversation is achieved by introducing your new contact to someone else that you know. Once the introduction has been made and they are chatting you can excuse yourself using either of the scripts below.

Thank you for spending some time with me. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. I promised to meet Jack Smith here today and I’d be rude if I didn’t go and say hello. Would you mind excusing me?

It’s been great chatting to you about project ‘X’. I wish you everything of the best with it. Perhaps we can catch up with one another later?

How to lead into a business discussion

Let us up the ante now, by looking at the array of additional questions that can be asked to swing any social discussion into a more formal business discussion.

We are attending events in the hope of meeting contacts who could generate business profits for us by doing business with us or by providing referrals who will do business with us. Let’s all be completely honest about that. You already know that you must not attempt to close sales in these situations or appear to be trying to force your products and services on your new contacts. You also know that you should not jump into a business discussion or sales pitch until both your contact and you are feeling comfortable in a relaxed environment. The best way to accomplish this is to establish some common social ground. Remember to use your 30 second spot that you have prepared as an introduction of yourself. Unless your contact has also prepared such an introduction he might be unsure of what to say to you and may need some prompting questions. By now you should know that I’ve got plenty of questions.

You could simply ask your new contact the same questions you answered yourself in the 30 second preview. This would give you a fair amount of information on your new contact. However, sometimes you would want to take a more informal approach and the following statements with questions tagged on to the end can help.

I’ve had a very busy week and can’t wait to go fishing with my son. Do you fish? What do you do to relax?

This last month has been demanding, I’m looking forward to a weekend away with my family in the Drakensberg Mountains. Where do you go when you want to escape for a while?

There are, no doubt, many more statements that you could think of on your own and that you could use as effectively as I have. If you make them re-usable, that is not constrained to a particular time, they will be effective statements for many years to come.

In conversation with your new contact, if something is said by your contact that you wish to explore further and the conversation has been taken in a different direction by other contacts in the group; there is no harm in bringing the conversation back to that topic simply by saying “I was interested in what you said earlier. Could you tell me a little bit more about it…”

When moving the conversation towards a business discussion once you have the name of the company that your contact represents there are a number of questions that you can ask to convey your interest in your contact. For example, you could inquire about the role that your contact plays within that company, how busy he or she is at present, and politely ask why they are busy or why things are considered to be quiet at the moment.

These suggested questions could then lead you to ask about industry related issues that could further enhance your understanding of your contact’s business and where they fit in the industry they represent.

Here are the probing questions:

What do you do?

Who do you do ‘it’ with?

How do you do ‘it’?

Why do you do ‘it’ that way?

Where do you do ‘it’?

Would you like to do ‘it’ better?

There are always opportunities that can be revealed if you show a genuine interest in your conversation partner. Your interest will often be rewarded as contacts are more likely to open up and willingly provide important information to you as an interested party if they decide that you are likeable. Many deals are struck because the deal maker decides that he has an affinity with the person or company that he is placing the business with. If you are dealing with a decision maker they may well have information pertaining to the future goals and aspirations of their company. You just have to ask. Armed with this information there may well be a number of opportunities for you to assist the company to achieve these goals. If you happen to be attending a presentation it would make sense that you ask your contact what motivated him to attend this event and how the topics discussed or to be discussed effect his business.

Once you have been awarded business by a new contact your real sales ability will be scrutinized, namely your ability to provide them with outstanding service.

You should always recognize the confidence that your purchaser has placed in you by sending an immediate “thank-you” note thanking them for placing the order with you and appreciating that they had a choice of alternative providers. Wherever possible you should attempt to make yourself a vital component of your contacts team. Make yourself available to help out if the need arises, and always be on hand to provide appropriate solutions for any given problem. Make sure your contact or any member of his teams thinks of you first whenever they feel that help is required.