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Business Rule #26:
Show Your Face
April 22, 2005
(PAGE 3 of 3)
One afternoon, I was out in the field with a client making a sales call on an advertising agency. The agency had a first-floor office, a large portion of which was under construction. “It looks like you’re making a lot of changes,” my colleague commented. “Oh, let me show you around,” the ad man responded, as he jumped up to take us on a tour. We learned more about the agency, the specifics of its services and needs, than we ever could have sitting in an office. Plus, we met other potential buyers at the agency in a friendly, non-threatening situation. You don’t get that on a conference call.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. There is a time and a place for the phone. It’s great for scheduling meetings or when you need to contact as many people as possible in a short period of time. As a general rule though, the most effective way to cultivate a relationship is to meet in person. If that’s not practical, the phone can be quite useful. The least personal method of contact is a letter or an e-mail, where the receiver can’t even hear your tone of voice.
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Of course, it depends on the situation. When a client is in another time zone, meeting face-to-face may be too expensive and talking on the phone too inconvenient, if one party has to be awake at four in the morning to make the call. For these situations, e-mail may be the perfect answer.
Bren’s boardroom admission that he’s not a risk-taker was another example of doing too much talking and not enough listening. When your boss is evaluating your performance, it’s no time to bring up your shortcomings. Save it for your therapist. It’s one thing if your boss asks you to improve on certain aspects of your performance. It’s quite another if the issue hasn’t come up. Don’t volunteer your failings—or, like Bren, you might give the impression that you have a job death wish. In the boardroom, it often seems that whoever does the most talking wins. You need to know what to say though. You get that by listening. Bren didn’t hear what Trump was saying and talked about all the wrong things. Bren talked and talked—and talked himself right out of a job.
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The most effective way to cultivate a relationship is to meet in person.
