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This rule reminds us that feeling and communicating a sense of caring for another person comes first in any relationship. In other words, you put another’s concerns before your own.

These rules should be applied in the following steps:

Step 1: Just before sales conversations or meetings, ask yourself how you feel at that moment and then pause, exhale, and proceed. It is important to exhale because when we are nervous or tense, we tend to hold our breath, which tightens us up and makes fluid movement difficult. Exhaling is a sports training technique in which athletes release tension and improve performance. Taking time to recognize your feelings, to relax, and to exhale will allow you to manage your emotions consciously, and to control and use your emotions and your tensions to help you.

Step 2: Sense the mood and the emotional climate of the person or group you are meeting with. Beginning salespeople are usually nervous and anxious when they meet with customers, particularly the first time, and are unaware that customers are probably as nervous, anxious, and uncomfortable as they are. Effective leaders, politicians, and entertainers develop a knack for sensing the mood of a crowd or audience and playing to it. Salespeople must develop similar radar.

Step 3: Set the mood, the emotional tone and climate, for the meeting. Emotion is contagious, so by taking charge and energetically exuding a sense of confidence and enthusiasm (yes, “enthusiasm!” like my first sales manager often repeated) you infect the others with your contagious enthusiasm and positive vibes. Enthusiasm does not have to be the loud, excited, highly demonstrated type we often associate with back‐slapping, broad‐grinning used‐car salesmen, but honest enthusiasm can come through in a restrained, calm, confident way that is in harmony with the emotional state of the other person or people in a meeting.

As Goleman points out in Emotional Intelligence:

We transmit and catch moods from each other in what amounts to a subterranean economy of the psyche in which encounters are toxic, some nourishing. This emotional exchange is typically at a subtle, almost imperceptible level; the way a salesperson says ‘thank you’ can leave us feeling ignored, resented, or genuinely welcomed and appreciated. We catch feelings from one another as though they were some kind of social virus.”⁷

Make sure the viruses you transmit are positive, caring ones.

Step 4: Let the person or people you are meeting with know that you care. The best way to accomplish this step in a first meeting with a person is to begin by being very open about yourself. The goal is to reach out with personal details about yourself to enable the other person to get to know you. At that point you can ask the question, “How about you?” to learn more about the other person. People will normally reciprocate with openness and talk about themselves, their families, their hobbies, and interests. As they are talking, you must search for common interests and associations, such as being married, having children, or loving sports. This is an application of Rule #2, “people like and trust people exactly like themselves,” and your job is to talk about and emphasize those things in each of your personal lives that are similar. By showing a genuine sense of caring about their personal interests, they will know that you care. After the meeting, write down all the personal details for future reference. Always keep in mind the greatest advantage you have over algorithms is your ability to connect emotionally with people.

Also, be prepared to encounter different responses from men and women, for as Goleman writes, men generally “take pride in a lone, tough‐minded independence and autonomy” and women generally “see themselves as part of a web of connectedness.”⁸ These gender differences are pointed out to encourage you to be aware of your own tendencies and to know what you might expect in an initial encounter with someone to be more like them and to build rapport. You can and probably should change these gender generalizations and initial stereotypes once you have had the opportunity to get to know someone better.

Also, when meeting with a group of people for the first time, it pays large dividends to research their personal backgrounds and interests prior to your meeting.

Step 5: Listen with “emotional synchrony,” as Goleman calls it. “The degree of emotional rapport people feel in an encounter is mirrored by how tightly concentrated their physical movements are as they talk… One person nods just as the other makes a point, both shift chairs at the same moment, or one leans forward as the other leans back.”⁹ This type of synchrony is a major way to transmit a “social virus” or emotional state or mood. It is also makes you more similar to the other person in the conversation, gets you closer, and makes them feel that you care.

Having learned about the importance of emotional intelligence in building relationships in this chapter, in the next chapter you will learn how to put your EQ knowledge to work in communicating with, listening carefully to, and understanding what makes people tick.