Talking to Strangers

My Daddy always said he never met a stranger and I believe he truly looked at life that way. He was comfortable talking with anyone; it didn’t matter who they were. Claude Castleberry was one of fifteen children my grandparents raised, so there was always a crowd around him. Actually, my grandmother raised one of my cousins too and I thought as I was growing up that she was my aunt.

Back to Daddy. He once told me about when he owned a dry cleaning store. Daddy always had a business; he was an entrepreneur before we used that word in East Tennessee. Daddy told me sometimes it would take him a long time to get to know a person well enough before they would trust him to do their dry cleaning. He told me he drove his van by this old man’s house for six months and stopped and talked with him every time he found him sitting out on his porch. One day, the old man finally asked Daddy to take his hat and clean it for him. Daddy knew how to build relationships.

Relationship building comes naturally for some people, but not for me. My personality was more like my Mom’s. I was reserved, quite and shy and learning to build relationships was a challenge for me. Over the years, I have developed my skills and here are some of the things I did to learn what my Daddy was born with.

1. Take baby steps. Talking with people I didn’t know was frightening for me, so I decided to make myself speak to at least one person on my way from the parking lot into my office each morning. I increased the numbers as I became more comfortable and expanded to include all the trips between the office and my car.


2. More baby steps. I decided to start talking with people at the grocery store. The check-out clerks were my first hurdle. I wanted to get to know their names and ask about their families and where they were going to school. I now know the store managers too.


3. Join a professional or business organization. My office was a member of the local Chamber, so I decided to attend some of the networking events to get to know folks in the business community. At first, I didn’t know what do to at these functions and becoming a wallflower was easy. I needed a way to make myself talk with people. I devised a game to play and that made the events a challenge for me and fun. Here’s the game – put a handful of your business cards in your left jacket pocket. As you are talking with folks and find the opportunity, exchange business cards with them. Put their card in your right pocket. Empty your left pocket and you are ready to go home.

Those three steps sure helped me and hopefully that will give you some ideas to get you started building relationships. Susan RoAne has two excellent books you could use as additional resources: How to Work a Room and What Do I Say Next? I recommend putting them in your personal library.

Once you have talked with folks and begun to broaden your network, you need to work on building the connections you have with them. Collecting business cards is not enough. You need to stay in contact with your new friends. Follow up with each person periodically and nurture that relationship. Start thinking about how you can connect your new friends with each other.

As a little girl, I remember when Daddy was building houses. He was a general contractor and was building mainly “starter homes”. It wasn’t uncommon for me to run through the kitchen and find a young couple sitting at our kitchen table drinking coffee and talking with Daddy about the home they wanted. Daddy always said he built homes not houses. This was true when you got to know how we went about it.

Daddy would talk with the folks and get to know what they wanted in their home, get to know their dreams. He would sketch out on a paper napkin the floor plan and they would all shake hands and the deal was complete. Daddy built relationships around our kitchen table.

Sharon Cawood
Business Developer & Community Relations Professional
Knoxville, Tennessee
Sharon@ntown.com
www.srcawood.blogspot.com

Nurturing Your Network: Making Love With Your Hairdresser

Over my years in business, I have learned how relationship building and nurturing those relationships are fundamentally the most basic parts of building a business. It doesn’t matter what business you are in, if you need customers to make your business successful, you need to learn to build and nurture your relationships.

Here is a place to start. Find a good hairdresser and nurture that relationship by referring your friends and associates to her. The folks at Jackson Vocational Instrument Survey (JVIS) determined many years ago that many people become hairdressers for the social interaction with their customers. Of course, this statement is a bit over simplified, so see JVIS for the details, but here’s my point. The social interaction aspect of a hairdresser’s business could be your ticket to building your business (and hers).

You never know who your hairdresser knows and if she understands who makes good customers for you, she is more likely to refer people she knows to you. Likewise, you can do the same for her. That’s the way relationship building and nurturing works. As you build your network, your reputation as a willing source of information and help will grow and also work to expand your network.

An auto repair shop owner, computer consultant, educator, it doesn’t make any difference what your business is, building and nurturing relationships is the central part of growing your business. You can be the best chef, doctor, or plumber in the world and your business will not grow without building and nurturing relationships. Never under estimate the power of your relationships.

Don’t worry about keeping score. Generosity is the key to building and nurturing relationships. As Keith Ferrazzi explains in his book, Never Eat Alone, relationships grow with actions not with making sure the scorecard is even.

I have used this principle of relationship building and nurturing for many years now and have a mighty network of folks who regularly call on me for help and referrals and of course, I gladly call on them when I need their assistance. I try to help anyone who asks. I’ve even received requests for help from friends of friends of friends.

I can honestly say, it never fails to amaze me how generosity pays off both in the good feeling you get when your give and also with the good feeling you get when you can ask someone for help and you see how excited they are about doing everything in their power to help you. Build and nurture the relationship you have with your hairdresser and watch both your businesses grow.

Sharon Cawood
Community Relations & Business Development Professional
Knoxville, Tennessee
sharon@ntown.com