Chapter 18
Discover the Buried Treasure
How do you know exactly what kind of potential this random encounter represents? Is this person someone who runs a department in a company? An entire company? Is this new connection an investor? A small-business owner? Retired? Undergoing a career transition? Maybe this person is none of the above but well connected to all the right people around town. Knowing what you are looking for—having a clear idea of your primary outcome—will allow you to guide the conversation to discover what is possible through your new connection.
Of course, you don’t want to come across as someone who’s disingenuous or blatantly hunting for leads. However, once you have initiated a conversation and proved you’re not going to steal the other person’s identity, you will want to determine whether that person is, in fact, someone worth knowing. Sure, everyone has something to offer; it could simply be good company for the ride (or the wait, or the party). And everyone knows someone who’s worth knowing. But if your long-term goal is to expand your business by expanding your network, your short-term goal is to determine whether this particular individual’s position, personal/professional network, or knowledge can be useful to you.
Qualifying your new friend and determining whether he or she represents an opportunity for you is an essential step in successful random connecting. Use your goals to determine whether it will be beneficial to pursue the conversation. After gauging the person’s willingness to engage, and starting with neutral questions or statements, you want to get to the meat of the matter: What does this person do for a living? Whom can this person connect me to? And is there something here that I can leverage for our mutual benefit?
You’ll want to assess quickly whether this individual is someone of influence. If you are selling a product or service, you want to determine whether your new connection is a decision maker with buying authority and money to spend. If you are seeking a job, you will want to assess whether this person has influence over hiring or can introduce you to people who do. You will have a profile—either formally or in your mind—of the type of individual who represents your best potential lead.
Time is your greatest ally, as well as a precious, finite resource, so you want to spend it where it will do you the most good. There’s an old story of an elevator salesman who was having a terrible time getting customers. He was sure he was doing everything right and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t making sales. “I’m very professional when I talk to my prospects,” he said. “I know my products very well, so I think I am very believable when I discuss them. I listen well, and my presentation is very engaging. I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
He finally gave up trying to figure it out himself and decided to ask his manager to spend a day with him in his territory making sales calls. Wanting to help in any way he could, the manager agreed to go along and see if there was something this eager but desperately unsuccessful elevator salesperson was doing wrong.
It didn’t take any longer than their first appointment for the manager to identify the problem. The salesperson was calling on owners of one-story buildings!
The lesson here? Knowing your ideal customer or target contact’s profile is crucial in making effective random connections. If the person isn’t in your sweet spot, you will be having a completely different conversation than if that person represents the pot o’ gold you’ve been dreaming of.
My best type of random connection target is an executive in a professional services or business-to-business company who uses external resources (read “consultants”) to help improve their company’s performance, especially revenue growth. So after breaking the ice and establishing some rapport, I guide the conversation toward their line of work—sometimes going there immediately and directly, sometimes a little more slowly, depending on how the other person is responding. If the person is open to conversation, I ask the million-dollar question: “So what line of work are you in?” And I ask it sooner rather than later. If the new connection seems at all reticent, I might build the rapport a little more before focusing on the outcome. But I know what I want to know about the other person, and I try to get there as fast as I can, while always ensuring the person feels validated and respected regardless of his or her leveragability.
I uncovered opportunity quickly on a recent subway ride. A simple comment of mine opened the door to a high-potential conversation with a person who appeared ready to exit the train at the next stop. I noticed that this individual was carrying a backpack featuring a logo from a company I was interested in approaching. After a quick exchange about the fact that the air-conditioning on the train wasn’t working very well, I directed the conversation to something more productive. “So do you work for those guys?” I asked, motioning toward the logo.
“Yes,” she replied.
“That company is doing some really cool stuff,” I said. “What do you do for them?”
She explained that she was in product marketing, which happened to be the target of my inquiry. I asked if she would mind giving me the name of the director of marketing and if I could follow up with her later on. She gladly provided the name and gave me her contact info, along with an invitation to send her an e-mail—all of which occurred between subway stops.
A conversation with a complete stranger is a discovery process, one where you guide the interaction toward finding out about each other and determine whether there is a basis for further interaction. Determining whether the individual is of value to you is an essential step in successful random connections. Of course, everyone has value in some way, but some have more than others or are offering exactly what you’re seeking. Based on your goals and your ability to determine the other’s contact value as quickly as possible, you very well may find yourself uncovering a business or career opportunity beyond what you ever thought possible.