How to Be in the Room Without Working It

Imagine an interior designer named Margo Feld who joins her town’s garden club, because two of her clients belong to it. At the first few meetings, she talks with as many members as she can. When people ask what she does, she tells them about the kitchen she just finished on Elm Street. Then she hands them her card. She gives a card to a few people who do not ask, too.

By the third month, the conversations at the club are shorter. Margo has two installations in April, so she misses one meeting, then another. She lets her membership lapse in the summer, and nobody from the club calls her.

Suppose instead that Margo offers at her first meeting to write up each month’s talk for the club’s newsletter. She sends it out on the Friday after every meeting. She stays for coffee once the talk is over, and she talks about her work only when someone asks.

In her second spring at the club, Mrs. Whitcombe sits down beside her at coffee. Mrs. Whitcombe is clearing out her late mother’s house, and she has heard from another member that Margo is a designer. “Do you take on whole houses?” she asks. Margo says that she does, in one sentence. Then she asks what Mrs. Whitcombe thought of the talk on roses. Mrs. Whitcombe calls her the next week.

Margo joined the same club both times. In the first version, she gave the club three months and talked about her business. In the second, she gave it more than a year and did a job for it. So choose one room, go back for a year, do a job there, and let people ask what you do. Here is why the hours matter, and what one broker’s church did for his business.

A casual friendship takes about 50 hours together

A room is a group you go back to on a schedule. Examples include a garden club, a committee, and a parents’ association. The people in it come to know each other through the hours they spend together.

In 2018, Jeffrey Hall, a communication researcher at the University of Kansas, studied how long it takes to make a friend. He surveyed adults who had moved in the last six months and were looking for new friends. A second study followed first-year students at the university. Hall found that it takes roughly 50 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend. Becoming a friend takes about 90 hours, and becoming a close friend takes more than 200.

Hall also found that the kind of hours matters. Time spent hanging out and joking around counted. Hours spent working together did not count as much.

Here is what those hours mean for a room. Suppose you go for two hours, twice a month. A year gives you about 48 hours with the people who come as often as you do. So a year of showing up is roughly what it takes to become their casual friend.

That matters for your business, because a wealthy client passes on a name only when they are willing to vouch for it. Each name a person passes on puts their own standing at risk. That is why most people will not vouch for someone they have met twice.

A Nashville broker served at his church, and a third of his sales came from it

In 2016, the National Association of Realtors wrote about Hagan Stone, a real estate broker in Nashville, Tennessee. Stone joined his church more than 20 years earlier, well before he went into real estate. From his senior year of college on, he taught Sunday school and volunteered there.

Stone did not need to market himself at the church. The members knew who he was, and those who used him as their agent told their friends and family. He sold about 60 to 65 homes a year, and a third of them came from the congregation. “My service at the church has opened up relationships,” he said.

Stone came to know the members through years of service that had nothing to do with houses. So when one of them needed an agent, they already trusted him. A job in a room does the same for you. It lets people see how you work before they ever need you.

A job in the room gives you a reason to be there

Hall’s finding about working together points to a problem with a job in a room. The hours you spend doing the job count for less than the hours you spend talking. His advice to people who work together was simple. “If you work together, go to lunch or out for a drink,” he said.

Here is the course’s view of why a job is still worth taking. First, it gives you a reason to be there that has nothing to do with your business. So nobody wonders why you came. Second, it shows people how you work, the way the members of Stone’s church saw him teach Sunday school. Margo’s newsletter went out on the Friday after every meeting, and every member saw that it did.

The talk after the meeting, over coffee or a drink, adds the hours that count most. So take the job, and stay for the talk.

Why selling in the room goes wrong

Imagine a business coach named Ruth Okafor who joins the gala committee of her local hospital foundation. She takes on the seating chart. For five months she does it well, and she stays for a drink after each meeting.

Then a quiet quarter leaves Ruth with two open places in her coaching program. Over drinks after the next meeting, she tells three committee members about the openings. “If you know anyone who’s stuck, I’d love an introduction,” she says. The next morning, she sends one of them her brochure.

The members are polite about it. Over the next few meetings, though, they stop talking about their own work in front of Ruth. When one of them mentions trouble with a business partner, he glances at Ruth and changes the subject. Nobody on the committee passes her name on.

Here is the course’s view of why the pitch costs so much. Once people see that you came for business, they take everything friendly you said before as part of the pitch. The five months Ruth spent on the seating chart now look like the start of a sale.

In the version that works, Ruth fills her openings through her past clients and says nothing about them at the committee. In the spring, the committee chair mentions over drinks that her husband’s firm needs a coach for a new partner. The chair asks Ruth what she does. Ruth answers in one sentence, and the chair passes her name to her husband.

A quieter mistake is to leave too soon, as Margo did when she gave the garden club three months. At two hours twice a month, three months is about 12 hours. That is about a quarter of the 50 hours Hall found it takes to become a casual friend.

How to be in one room for a year

Choose one room from your map of the places where wealthy clients gather. Choose one where you have a reason to be that is not your business. Give it a year before you judge it.
Ask the person who runs the room what needs doing, and take one job. For example, you can say, “Is there a job nobody has picked up yet? I’d be glad to take it.” Then do the job the same way every time.
Put the room’s dates for the next 12 months in your calendar, about twice a month. Keep them the way you keep a client’s appointment.
Stay for the talk after each meeting, over coffee or a drink. Hall found that time spent hanging out counts more than time spent working together.
When someone asks what you do, answer in one sentence, and go back to the room’s business. For example, a personal trainer can say, “I’m a trainer, mostly for people coming back from an injury.” Then she can ask about the next meeting.
Keep your openings, offers, and cards out of the room, even in a slow month. Fill a gap through your past clients or your other work.
After six months, count the people in the room who greet you by name. If the count is growing, the room is working, even before anyone asks for your number.

Next: You will see how to rewrite what you sell as one whole result, by the project or by the month.