The $30m power of small talk

A story. And a juicy one.

Dr Gregory Neidert – persuasion wizard and all-round influence brain – worked with a Fortune 100 negotiation team who had a monster problem.

Deals took AGES, and they were haemorrhaging money.

Niedert’s team noticed two tiny, but critical, issues:

1. Their negotiators always arrived late (the other side arrived 15 mins early)

2. When they finally rocked up, they went straight down to business

So why was this a problem?

First, the lateness showed disrespect to the other team – setting negotiations off on the wrong foot.

Second, it didn’t allow any time for small talk or connection before negotiations started.

This meant that they didn’t activate the Liking Principle, which states that we’re more likely to do things for people we like. And that was a huge missed opportunity.

So Neidert suggested they make 3 small changes:

1. Arrive early, especially the initial meeting with the other side

2. Research the opposite negotiators’ backgrounds and hobbies and make a list of everything they knew

3. Pick one genuine point of connection and talk about it before business begins

The results were startling.

The company ended up cutting negotiation time by 30% and saved a whopping $10-30m each year.

All that from a few minutes of actual human connection.

Now, you might not be closing billion-dollar mergers every week. Few of us are!

But you are persuading all day long.

• You want your boss to prioritise your thing

• You want a client to respond

• You want your team to actually do what you’ve asked

But in your keenness to get stuff done, are you skipping the “liking” bit?

Do you dive straight into “Here’s what I need…”?

So, your micro action is this: Before you write, call or ping that message, pause for 10 seconds and think:

What do we genuinely have in common?

• Shared client?

• Shared pain?

• Same TV show obsession?

• Same project scars?

• A love of Cockerpoos?!

Then mention it with a light touch and see what happens to your relationships.

And, as always, let me know how you get on. (And yes, it would mean we have something in common!)