How to Start a Conversation With a New Business Associate

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How to Start a Conversation With a New Business Associate

Written by: abrowell 274 views

You normally only get one chance to make a good impression, so take your first meeting with new business associates seriously. Give strong consideration as to how to make people feel at ease and how to make easy interesting conversation.

Steps

Greet the new person. Extend a compliment and/or an ice breaker into the conversation
Try to find a commonality between the two of you, even if it is through business backgrounds.
Go into general topics that most people can discuss. Some suggestions include: current news stories, weather, interests and friendly topics such as food, music, movies, books, and sports.
Be observant to any visual or verbal clues to draw a topic out. For example, a certain wristband, watch, gadget, pictures of family members, interesting clothing, etc.

Tips

Remember to be polite. Since this is a business associate, you cannot pick your co-workers and making a bad first impression can come back to haunt you.
Try to respond with both verbal cues and physical ones such as head nods and getures of understanding.
Use their name after they say it once, to confirm the pronunciation and for storing it in your brain.

Warnings

General topics to avoid: religion, politics, sex, philosophy, world problems, death, divorce, or anything else that might become a personally offensive subject or human resource issue.