Anchor, Reveal, Encourage

Imagine a dog walker named Lucas Ferreira who meets Mrs. Ashworth at her door. Her neighbor gave her his name. Her dog, Bramble, is a spaniel who leans against her leg while she talks. Lucas opens with the detail the neighbor gave him. “Your neighbor said Bramble came from a rescue. How did you two find each other?”

Mrs. Ashworth talks for a minute about the rescue in Vermont. In the first year, she says, Bramble would not go near a man. Then she stops. Lucas asks how old Bramble is. Then he asks what Bramble eats, whether he pulls, how far he walks, and whether he is good with other dogs. Mrs. Ashworth answers each one. After ten minutes she has answered 12 questions, and she knows nothing about the man who would have her dog every weekday.

She says she has two more walkers to see this week. She hires the second of the two. She tells her neighbor that the walker she chose “felt like someone I already knew.”

Suppose instead that Lucas hears about the first year and says, “He came straight to me, so you’ve done the work.” Then he says, “The first dog I walked for money was a rescue who would not leave the porch for a month. I sat on the step with him every morning until he did.” Then he asks, “What finally got Bramble past it?”

Mrs. Ashworth tells him about the summer she walked Bramble past the mail carrier every day. Then she asks what happened to the dog on the porch. Lucas answers in two sentences and asks whether Bramble has a route he likes. The conversation goes back and forth for ten minutes, and Mrs. Ashworth does most of the talking. She books Lucas before he leaves.

Lucas asked good questions both times. What changed was two sentences about a dog on a porch. They told Mrs. Ashworth what kind of walker was asking, and they gave her something to ask about. Here is why a conversation needs that step, and the three steps that make room for it.

People warm to the person who tells them something back

In 2013, five researchers published an experiment in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. They paired strangers and gave each pair questions to ask each other. In some pairs, the two people took turns asking and answering. In the other pairs, one person answered the questions while the other only listened, and in a second round they switched.

The pairs that took turns liked each other more after the first round. They felt closer, found more in common, and enjoyed the conversation more. The second round did not close the gap. The listeners got their turn to talk, and the pairs that had taken turns from the start still liked each other more.

Those were strangers in a study, and the step to a client’s front hall is the course’s own. Here is the step. The first version of Lucas’s visit was the second kind of pair, where one person answers and the other only listens. Mrs. Ashworth answered and Lucas listened, and nothing he asked afterward could put that right. The second version took turns from the start.

The earlier studies point the same way. In 1994, a review in the journal Psychological Bulletin went through the earlier studies. They asked what people tell about themselves, and who gets liked for it. People like the person who tells them something about themselves. They also like a person more after telling that person something. So both halves of a turn count. The client warms to you when you tell them something, and warms to you again when they answer your question.

Three steps make room for the fact about you

Carol Fleming, a communications expert, teaches small talk as three steps, and she gave each step a name. Brett McKay set the method out on The Art of Manliness in 2017.

Anchor. Open with a remark about something you both can see or both know, what Fleming calls your “mutual shared reality.” The weather, the food, or the room will do. Fleming calls these remarks “friendly noises,” and both people know they are a polite way into the real conversation.

Reveal. After the other person answers, tell them something about yourself that connects to the anchor. McKay’s example is a man in a weight room who says “Great lift!” and then, “I’d love to be able to pull that much weight on the deadlift.”

Encourage. Hand the conversation back with a question about them. The man in the weight room asks, “Are you following a specific program?”

Fleming’s method is for a stranger in a gym or in the line for food at a wedding. The weather is all you share with that stranger. Measured against this lesson, the anchor changes for a client, and the other two steps do not. With a client, the detail the client gave you is the better anchor. It could only have been said to them. Lucas’s anchor was the first year with Bramble, which Mrs. Ashworth had just told him about. The reveal and the question are the same as in the gym.

The reveal is the step that goes missing at a client’s door, and a good habit is the reason. The client is the subject, and a professional who knows that sends every turn back to the client as a question. The result is Lucas’s first visit. The client has told you about their dog, their daughter, or their garden, and you have told them nothing. The question that follows is one more question.

A music teacher gives one fact and gets the piano’s story

Imagine a music teacher named Beatriz Sousa who meets Mrs. Carrow about lessons for her daughter, Hattie, who is nine. Mrs. Carrow’s message said that Hattie would learn on “my grandmother’s piano.” At the door, Beatriz asks about the piano. Mrs. Carrow says it came from a farmhouse in Ohio and has not been tuned in years.

Beatriz says, “I learned on my grandmother’s upright too. It was a quarter tone flat, and I can still hear it in my head.” Then she asks, “Has anyone played yours since your grandmother?”

Mrs. Carrow says that nobody has, and that Hattie is the first in the family to ask. Then she asks whether Beatriz still has her grandmother’s piano. Beatriz says it is in her sister’s house, and asks what Hattie picks out on the farmhouse piano now. Mrs. Carrow books a term of lessons, and the first one starts with a visit from the tuner.

The fact Beatriz gave was two sentences long, and it was about a piano, which was Mrs. Carrow’s subject. It told Mrs. Carrow that the teacher she was hiring had started where Hattie would start.

Why a reveal that runs on goes wrong

Imagine a personal stylist named Marguerite Doyle whose new client is Ms. Vance. Ms. Vance says she has been made a partner, and her first partners’ dinner is in June. Marguerite knows the feeling of walking into a room as the newest person in it, and she says as much. Then she keeps going. She tells Ms. Vance about her first year in the business and the trunk show where she knew nobody. Then she tells her about the client who taught her to dress for a room she had not seen. It takes four minutes.

Ms. Vance listens politely. When Marguerite finishes, Ms. Vance looks at her watch and asks what the fee would be. She hires the stylist a colleague uses.

Marguerite meant to connect, and her first sentence did. Everything after it took the subject from Ms. Vance and gave it to Marguerite. The dinner, which was the reason for the meeting, went unmentioned for four minutes. McKay gives the same warning with the method. “Too many of your own comments won’t give the other person a chance to talk.” The reveal that works is the first sentence and then the question. For example: “I know that feeling. The first time I walked into a room as the newest person in it, I had dressed for the wrong room.” Then, “What is the room like?”

One fact about yourself is not making the meeting about you

A client’s favorite subject is their own life, and a question about the client is what carries the warmth. So a sentence about yourself can feel like a step in the wrong direction, with a client who did not ask.

The sentence about you is short, and it is there for the client’s benefit. It connects to what they said, and it ends with the lead handed back. The pairs in the experiment who only listened were not the warm ones. The warm ones took turns. Lucas’s two sentences about the porch dog took ten seconds, and Mrs. Ashworth talked for the next ten minutes. What the ten seconds gave her was a walker she could picture, and a reason to ask him something. That is what “felt like someone I already knew” means.

How to add the reveal to your next first meeting

Write the detail you will open with for your next new client. It came from their message, the person who introduced you, or the room. That detail is your anchor.
Under it, write one fact about yourself that connects to the detail. Keep it to one or two sentences, from your own life or your work. For example, a tutor whose opener is a note that the son has just changed schools can write, “I changed schools at 12 and spent the first term lost in a different textbook.”
Write the question that hands the lead back. It asks about the client, and not about your fact. For example, the tutor asks, “What has he said about the new school so far?”
In the meeting, after the client answers your opener, say the fact and ask the question, in that order. Then let the client answer.
If the client asks about your fact, answer in a sentence or two and ask again. For example, a caterer who said she learned to cook in her aunt’s restaurant can answer one question about the restaurant. Then she asks, “Who does the cooking in your house now?”
Keep taking turns, with each of your turns shorter than the client’s. The fact is one or two sentences and the question is one. So the client’s turn stays the longer one, and the subject stays the client.
Afterward, write down what the client asked you, under the client’s name. It tells you what they wanted to know about the person they were hiring.

Next: You will see why the client who did most of the talking leaves trusting you, and how listening does that.