Rule #30 Small Talk: Painful, Polished, Unselfishness, and Open-Minded

The opposite of being provocative is small talk. The elite salespeople (challenger sellers especially, as opposed to relationship builders (see The Challenger Sale for more info)) sometimes get a bad rap as being intimidating, unapproachable, arrogant, or rude. These descriptions are true broadly speaking and easily supported with multiple examples, so we can’t downplay them. 

Salesmen have garnered a bad reputation in society for good reason. Sometimes that reputation is deserved; sometimes it’s because of a misunderstanding. My experience has been that many elite salespeople, who can never turn it off because it is truly in their nature to sell, hate small talk. They can use small talk when absolutely necessary to be polite. Small talk is work for them, however, and it is extremely low on their priority list. It’s just how they are wired. 

Ask about something important, and they will dive deep, and you will be stunned at the passion they bring to the conversation, which could last for hours. Ask about the small stuff, however, and they will genuinely struggle to pay attention, leaving you with the impression they are rude. 

If that describes you (your spouse or a good friend has probably been pointing this out to you for some time now), it’s nothing to take pride in. Yes, it tells people like me that you are just what I am looking for when I am interviewing for an open position. But it is something we all have to work on. We cannot afford to give offense to small talkers we call on. If we are going to go far, we will need the executive polish to endure the mundane minutia of some of these unbearable conversations other people enjoy. 

Small talk is a chore for me. If you’re successful at sales:

• you never have enough time, 

• you are always in a hurry, and

• your drive is hurting other people’s feelings and possibly costing

you commission dollars.

I have learned, however, that small talk is often a test of my willingness to think of others more highly than myself, which is the only painless antidote to pride. All the other antidotes I know of are very painful. 

Remember and embrace this idea: Everyone is an expert at something. Listening to others when I am genuinely disinterested is a gift I give to the speaker. It is a matter of valuing others. And every once in a while, I find value in it, or it pays me back in some way I didn’t expect. 

Who did you fail to listen to this week? How many times did you cut someone short because you really had no desire to hear the rest of their story? Which family member do you avoid, lest you get sucked into their tractor beam of mindless drivel? 

In complex sales environments with multiple stakeholders, this is my personal challenge. In groups of four or more, one of those stakeholders is sure to be a small talker. (Yes, I thought Seinfeld did an episode on this, too, but he didn’t; she was “low talker,” not a small talker!) Small talkers matter—if only because they are made in God’s image, and we value life. Do I manage my time with them? Yes. Do I desperately steer the conversation to find something in common I would rather talk about? Yep! Look upon it as a gift to them and a development opportunity for you to learn humility and patience. If you really struggle with this one, make it matter of prayer. 

Let me make a simple analogy on small talk and kill two birds with one stone. Hollie Deelo was my manager for several years. She had been in the medical start-up world as a sales manager for over twenty-five years. Pagers and cell phones transformed her world and made it a 24/7 game. When she retired, I called her. She said that she had only one regret: She wished she had come to meetings a day earlier and left a day later. She had been to region meetings, area meetings, and national sales meetings all over the country at some of the nicer resorts and hotels in all of the nicest cities in America. But the business demanded last-minute flights in and red-eye flights out. She enjoyed only the inside of conference rooms at most of those tantalizing destinations featured in magazines depicting sand and sun and beautiful hotel amenities. 

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That was a tragic but priceless admission. I myself am a sightseer. I have been since I was a kid when my dad was a tour bus driver in between strikes and fires at coalmines in Western Pennsylvania in the 80s. He would take me with him, and I got to see all kinds of cool stuff at great places. 

Upon hearing Hollie’s confession, I made a commitment to arrive early and stay late. 

Small talk with people is similar. We have to make time for people like we would like to make time for great locations. Getting to know these people better can be as surprising as an extra day exploring a great city.

Secondly, and reinforcing our commitment to think the best about people we work with and call on, there may be a very good reason a person uses small talk. Many small talkers use it as a defense or coping mechanism (i.e., defensive deflectors). Most of us don’t have the emotional capacity to become emotionally entangled with anywhere from thirty to one hundred people who walk in the door of our work place daily. Small talk is a polite way to meet the need of human interaction without the burden of true emotional engagement. 

Maybe you need to earn the right to get inside that wall a small talker has put up and enter that special place reserved for friends and trusted acquaintances?

Third, small talkers have a story. If small talk is not being employed as a defense or deflection (as mentioned above), then something is going on. I can’t assure you that it will be a good story. But some people just aren’t socially adept enough to feel comfortable going beyond small talk. That deserves your pity and compassion, because their world is missing the deeper connections with people you and I take for granted. Their world is lonely. That means you might have a great opportunity to make someone’s day! 

Who are the small talkers you routinely encounter in your business? Who do walk past every day and overlook? Who have you marginalized because they didn’t make a great impression in conversation? Who has driven you completely nuts with small talk? Challenge yourself to take a minute with them next time to figure them out. If they fall in the first category of defensive or deflector, praise them for their tact and ability to protect their emotional capacity for the people in their lives who really matter to them. See if you can’t glean something from the conversation. If they fall into the second category—lonely and overlooked—do your best to draw them out

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and connect with them at a basic level that you can achieve with sincerity. Isn’t that the basis for hundreds of great stories? Just like the hugely successful movie The Blindside, in which a woman takes a minute to stop and connect with a lonely person (Michael Orr) whom everyone else is overlooking. 

If none of this is ringing a bell and you can’t identify with a word I am saying, you might be a relationship builder. You love small talk, and you love to get into the comfort zone with your customer. If so, you are likely succeeding in a commodity market or a me-too product market, or you are struggling terribly in a disruptive technology market where introducing concepts and pushing people out of their comfort zone is the norm. That’s okay; it just says a lot about me and you and our differences. 

But if small talk is not a challenge for you, chances are you are not being provocative in offering unique viewpoints to both challenge and move your customers. And I doubt your customers value you because of what you teach them. Beware. 

Elite execution demands that you understand the possible explanations for small talk, your personal bias against it, and your opportunity to make a weakness a strength