I’ve burnt bridges, not purposely, but simply by never going back and crossing them again. And I didn’t stay in touch with my clients…
Today, we’re gonna be talking about how you can quickly connect with someone in business in less than 90 seconds. A lot of you have maybe heard this, it’s called the elevator pitch, but I like to just say, hey, how do you connect with somebody in 90 seconds?
What you have to focus on when you’re meeting a new person, and I know a lot of things have changed with COVID and people don’t shake hands like they used to, but typically you would shake someone’s hand when you meet in an introduction. And most of the times this will come third-party, right? Like if I’m out networking, I always like to stay within arm’s length of someone that I actually know. It’s easy because now they’re gonna introduce you to other people and you can network off of their network, but if that’s not possible, and you are out in the sea of networks by yourself, I’m gonna teach you today, how you can connect with someone in 90 seconds.
The first tip that I’m gonna give you is that you have to make eye contact. This is something that I actually struggled with for a really, really long time. I actually still have it written down in my goals, because several years ago, I noticed that I was having a hard time keeping eye contact for whatever reason. And it was something that I just told myself consciously, every morning, when I read my goals that I was gonna work on, I was gonna try to make stronger and better eye contact with people. When you make eye contact with people, you probably have heard that it’s the window to the soul. It’s so true, that’s how you can truly connect to people. If you’re looking at them in their eyes, you just have a better connection. So, that’s the first thing we’re gonna do. When we meet somebody within the first 90 seconds, I need you to lock eye contact. If it’s super uncomfortable for you, just look between their eyes. They won’t know the difference. They don’t know that you’re looking at their nose, but if you look at the bridge between their eyes, that’s kind of like stage one and then actually try to make good eye contact.
The second thing is you genuinely, genuinely have to want to connect with the person. You can’t make business connections, if you don’t really care about connecting. I’ll tell you guys a quick story. Early on in my business career, I was very, very transactional. It was turn and burn. Get the lead, sell a deal, go on to the next one. I burnt bridges, not purposely, but simply by never going back and crossing them again. Meaning what, right? Meaning that I didn’t stay in touch with my clients. I truly believe that you can make lifelong relationships with all the people you come in contact with. And so by creating awesome eye-contact and truly wanting to be connected with that person, we’re now setting that foundation.
The next stage or the next step if you will, after you get this handshake out of the way, and you’ve made eye contact and you really want to connect with the person, is you can ask them a question. Say, tell me a little bit about yourself. In my personality training that I do, I form it as a statement, and I say, tell me about you. I actually learned this from one of my sales coaches back in the day, and it’s tell me about you, and then we shut up and we listen. And what comes out of their mouth is literally what I’m gonna have to ping pong back to them. So, and I know this sounds kind of superficial because you’re like, well, you’re like literally for the first 90 seconds- everything is staged up, but if you’re not good at communicating, if you’re not good at talking to people, maybe you’re new in business, or you’re just getting into a sales role, you’re not gonna be good at it. You have to have these steps or these guard rails, so to speak, that will keep you on track in order to make these connections.
So we’ve shook hands.
We made the eye contact.
We’re truly committed to creating the relationship, and I asked you, tell me about you.
They’re gonna give me some feedback. I need to now repeat that back to them.
So if they say, oh yeah, I moved here from Alaska. I’ve been here for about four years. I’m married and I’ve got a couple of kids. Say, oh dude, that’s awesome! So you moved here from Alaska?! What was that like? So, all I’m doing is I’m finding something they just told me, I’m finding a pinpoint and I’m asking them a question about it. So again, this really gets into the psychological stuff, but I’m saying, hey, what was it like moving from Alaska here to Louisville? Oh you know, the weather was a little different, but you know, this and that and this and that. What was your hobbies there, and are they still the same as they are here? And so, again, I’m just pulling this information out and this becomes very easy, if you really do want to connect with the person. Because as I’m connecting with a person, I’m learning more things about them.
The other thing that, I actually took this from my guy that does my custom tailored suits, Jordan Yocum, he says, tell me something awesome. Tell me something interesting. Those two things are amazing, and they’re great conversation starters. He’ll come into my office he’ll sit down and he’ll say, hey man, tell me something awesome. What, tell you something awesome? Yeah, I don’t wanna hear you bitch and moan. Tell me something awesome. And so you can ask people that and you’ll see them, they will light up. They’ll get excited to share something exciting to them with other people. So, literally within the first 90 seconds, you should only have to ask them two or three questions, and now you are connected.
The next step going past that 90 seconds is now you try to find common ground.
“Hey man, I like bass fishing and golfing too.”
“Oh, I just got back from Montana!”
“That’s so awesome that you guys just got back from there as well. It was crazy we didn’t run into each other.”
You try to find basis points that you can connect on.
So, that first 90 seconds make great eye contact. Be present in the moment. Want to actually connect with them. Ask them questions that make you, even if you’re not interested, make you seem interested in what they have going on in their life. And you’ll quickly start building those business connections.
Here’s to your success.
