Talk to Strangers: How Everyday, Random Encounters Can Expand Your Business, Career, Income, and Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

sellers with no buyers, and that’s a room full of sellers with only a handful of buyers.
     
    In fact, the people you find in coffee shops, at restaurants, in bars, at airports, on airplanes, at sporting events, and at social gatherings represent even more potential, because you are more than likely meeting them when they are most relaxed, accessible, and most available—in short, when they are most themselves. In a traditional networking setting, people are apt to be barraging your potential contact with demands for his or her attention. Individuals, especially those in a position of power, tend to erect a wall of sorts when they know that others will be approaching and asking for something. However, when you meet these same people outside the framework of traditional networking, you often find them at their most unguarded and mentally and emotionally available moments.
     
    CASE STUDY: A random encounter in a doctor’s office leads to a new supplier—and the perfect prescription for saving money on a marketing project for Isabel A.
     
As Isabel tells it:
     
Random connecting goes both ways between sellers and buyers. I met a supplier in a physician’s waiting room who helped me through a difficult budgetary challenge at work.
     
I was managing a major direct-mail program involving more than 1 million customers. My management had just cut my budget in half but required me to generate the same results. I really did not know what to do, but a medical appointment turned out to be just what the doctor ordered!
     
A doctor’s office is the least likely place I would have thought to make a business connection, but sitting in the waiting room, I noticed another woman across from me. We began talking about our respective conditions and how we found this particular doctor.
     
As part of this getting-to-know-you conversation, we started talking about what we do for a living. Imagine my delight when she said her company did direct-mail print production. I think she was equally delighted when I told her I had a need for exactly those kinds of services.
     
When it was her turn to see the doctor, we exchanged business cards and I promised to call. When we spoke the next day, I gave her the spec for the job I needed to get done and she gave me pricing that enabled me to get my project completed within the new budget limitations.
     
Within a month she had her first order from me. We did business for a number of years, and she continued to offer money-saving suggestions that made me and my boss very happy. We also became good friends, going to concerts and art shows together. Meeting her reminded me that you never know who you’re going to meet, wherever you are!
     
     
    With the exception of conventions and industry conferences, people in positions of influence tend to stay away from places where they are going to be captured, bound, and pitched. People with money, influence, access, and power know that they’re targets for those who want some or all of those things. It’s therefore not surprising that they don’t tend to go out of their way to put themselves in venues where they’ll encounter more of it.
     
    Don’t misunderstand; there is value in getting to know your fellow sellers. You can share company names, discuss insights on marketplace activity, exchange business cards, and talk about each other’s work. And even sellers are sometimes buyers. At the end of the day, though, you are more likely to meet people similar to you at industry or community networking events—sellers trying to meet people who have the authority to buy or who can influence those who do.
     
    However, if you are trying to find qualified leads, you won’t find the best of them at networking events. The real action is in a coffee shop, in a copy shop, in a hair salon, on the sidelines of a high school soccer field, in an office building elevator, or in the waiting room of the car dealership.
     
    Chapter at a Glance
     
     
 
Traditional