“I’m no good at small talk,” someone I am coaching told me yesterday.  I hear this from time to time in the course of my work.  The speaker is usually an introvert, faced with the need to attend an association event or to develop closer relationships with clients.  An introvert myself, I had to deal with this issue long ago.  My answer to this admission is always the same: there is no such thing as small talk.  There is business talk and there is relationship talk.  All conversation with a client belongs in one of these two categories.

It is impossible to have much of a relationship someone whom you know nothing about.  So-called small talk gives you many types of information about t he person you are speaking with; including background, habits, hobbies and sense of humor, just for starters; that let you build a relationship.  There is nothing small about these kinds of information.

Relationship’s are based, among other things, on shared experiences and mutual help.  So-called small talk allows you to recognize a past shared experience, whether it be experiences with a mutual friend who makes you both laugh or with a teenage child’s behavior that makes you both want to cry, with a client you have both worked for or with a problem you have both worked on.  Small talk gives you ideas about arranging experiences to share with client in the future, such as an association event or a night at the opera.

And small talk gives you information you need to help the client.  There are countless examples of this.  An actuary listening to a client’s venting about frustrations with a contractor who went bankrupt and disappeared half way through roofing her house was able to recommend another roofer.  A consultant was able to refer a client to his wife, a dentist, when the client’s child needed emergency attention.  A recruiter was able to advise a client’s child on his first job search.  All of these things happened, because the professionals in question had listened to so-called small talk.

If you think you’re no good at small talk, try the following:

• Try to find out something interesting about the person you are talking with.  People are usually interesting when they talk about things they are interested in.  Keeping the conversation going will be easy once you find such a topic.  This is standard advice to people learning to network.  It’s standard, because it works.

• Ask about the person’s family.  This is an especially productive subject if the person you’re talking to has children.  Almost everybody likes talking about their children, and the subject is a great social leveler.  You can talk about shared experiences with children with the chairman of the board or with the janitor, with someone who lives across the street from you or with someone who lives on the other side of the world.

• Use the person’s demeanor as a signal for starting a conversation.  You look like you are in a rush today.  You look a bit worried.  My, you look happy today.  Used selectively, words like these will usually start a conversation about something important to the other person.

• Key off a signal provided by the other person.  A tie with pictures of anchors on it signals a sailor.  A diploma hanging on an office wall will tell you the name of a person’s alma mater.  A trophy indicates passion and success in some area.

Anyone can learn to make small talk.  All it takes is an interest in the other person and a willingness to ask questions.

For more on this subject, see the post Networking Tips for Introverts.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 6:18 am and is filed under Networking, Prospective Client, Working a Room. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.