Are You Creating Deep Interactions?

John: Welcome back to the Green Apple Slices, it’s Monday morning and I’ve got Rachel Fisch with me from Deloitte Canada.

Rachel: Hello!

John: Yes. Thank you so much for joining me again. It’s kind of like a thing, I guess we should do this, I guess we should have you on.

Rachel: We should do this every Monday, yeah.

John: It sounds like a good idea. I’ll give you credit, it was all yours, all yours.

Rachel: I’m okay.

John: But this week I found an article on Business 2 Community, it’s an online magazine, and I just thought it was a really great article. It was called “Are You Creating Deep Interactions?” an article written by Dave Brock. I thought it was really good and really pertained to this topic in kind of being the Green Apple and creating those stronger connections between not only coworkers but also clients.

Rachel: Yeah. I liked that he kind of took the sales angle on it but to present it in a bit of a different way. But I think because of them like, “Well, I’m not a salesperson,” whatever, you are selling like constantly. You’re making connections with clients, you are making connections with other employees, there is an element of sales with professional interactions. So although I’m not a sales person I’m looking at this going “Oh, my goodness, that’s a really good point” is that so what he was saying was that in many cases we’re too concentrated on, for example, the number of connections we have and not concentrating enough on the fact that maybe those interactions that we’re having with people could be deeper, more significant.

And what it reminded me of as I was reading that is I was a controller for a car dealership and it was really interesting because all of the pressure was on the sales people to sell but what was interesting is that we made way more off of that vehicle, from a revenue perspective, servicing the vehicle. So the long-term relationship where you recognize the car owner when they come in to service their vehicle, we made way more revenue off of that client than off of that vehicle as a whole in the service relationship than we ever did in the sales relationship and yet the pressure was on the sales to get sales, to make connections, to get the leads to do that. So I thought that was a really fascinating thing, that it was this proven thing.

So if we take that concept and then put it in to instead of having a high-pressure environment, what about just going places and being open to relationships and being invested in the people that you’re doing the work with? I think in some cases where sales relationships tend to fall apart is when the customer stops feeling listened to or cared about. And so I think that that’s a need that’s identified but that either needs to be the salesperson’s job to create a deeper relationship in that case or you need to kind of pass them off to somebody who that is their specialty to continue to develop and cultivate that relationship.

John: Yeah, absolutely. Just like that when customers don’t feel valued anymore, it’s the same as with coworkers and staff. And so if you’re talking to them and you’re looking at your phone, or you’re looking over their shoulder or just brushing them off, just imagine if that was a customer that was coming to you with the amount of a salary, let’s say it’s an $80,000-customer. You wouldn’t brush them off and look at your phone as you’re talking to them and just be very superficial in that relationship. You would actually take the time and invest in them.

And that’s I think a really excellent point and really cool take that they had in the article was to look at it that way because really, your people are your most expensive asset. Yeah, sure, they’re not necessarily revenue-generating in the sense that clients are bringing you money but if people leave, that’s very expensive to you on the back end. And that’s the thing where I think maybe it’s looking at it in a short-term versus the long-term, like you said with the cars so that’s an excellent example.

Rachel: So there’s one engagement I heard about, I think it was just earlier this week, where one partner has worked for 14 years on one engagement with one client. Now, I’m sure that wasn’t what he was doing, however, the nature of this work that he’s secured is so large it actually got national recognition, like national newspaper type recognition. But imagine the amount of time and how many people would have given up on that level of pursuit and not waiting until it paid off. But the guy kept the relationship going and it paid off big time.

John: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Is it the Oscar’s ballot counting, because I heard that might be… but yeah. No, I thought it was really cool and an extra point that they added in the article was just by using your technology properly you can create that time because I think a lot of people say, “I don’t have time to get to know my coworkers or get to know people.”

Rachel: Who knows, yup.

John: And it doesn’t even take a lot of time to do this. It’s just a couple of minutes of genuine interest. So there we go.

Rachel: Yeah, everybody has the same interest. That’s how you use it.

John: See, now we’re talking, because I was fully invested in this conversation, I don’t know if you could tell. The other ones I’m kind of not really paying attention–

Rachel: Or five to seven minutes every Monday listening to John and Rachel’s Green Apple Slices Podcast. That’s all it takes.

John: Exactly. And that’s the perfect way to end this Green Apple Slices episode, so thank you so much, Rachel, for being with me again.

Rachel: Anytime.