What to Say When Someone Influential Turns Up

Imagine a home organizer named Dana Pryor. She has spent most of a year on the volunteer committee at her town’s history museum. She runs the sign-up sheet for the spring lectures and stays for coffee afterward.

One evening, the committee chair arrives with a guest. Helen Marsh sits on the hospital board and the museum’s board. When Helen recommends someone, people hire them. The chair introduces her to Dana and is called away.

Dana has had a quiet winter, and Helen is the kind of person she hoped to meet when she joined. So Dana tells Helen that she helps families move out of large houses, and she hands Helen her card. “If you ever hear of anyone who needs help, I’d be so grateful if you passed my name along,” she says.

Helen has just been asked for a favor by someone she met five minutes ago. She takes the card politely and goes to find the chair.

Helen does not mention Dana to anyone.

Suppose instead that Dana asks Helen how she got involved with the museum board. Helen says that her father left part of his collection to the museum. Dana asks whether any of it will be in the spring lectures, since she is putting the sign-ups together. Then Helen asks what Dana does, and Dana says, “I help families move out of a house they’ve lived in for decades.”

Helen says that her mother is thinking about leaving the family house. Nobody knows what the furniture is worth, and her mother does not know where to start.

Dana says, “That’s most of the work I do. If it would help to talk it through, I’m glad to.” Then Dana mentions an appraiser she trusts and asks where to send his name. Helen gives her an email address. The next week, Dana sends the appraiser’s name and nothing else.

In April, Helen’s mother calls Dana. Helen gave her the name.

Dana met the same woman both times. In the first version, she asked Helen for a favor within five minutes. In the second, she talked with Helen about the museum and answered when Helen asked about her. Then she sent one useful name.

So when someone influential turns up in a group you help run, keep the talk on them and on the group’s work. Afterward, send one useful name or answer that asks for nothing. Here is why a pitch costs you the recommendation, and how a New Jersey designer found a client over lunch and cocktails.

Someone influential is deciding whether to send you to a friend

Someone influential is a person whose recommendation other people act on. Examples include the board chair, the wedding planner every family in town uses, and the parent the other parents copy.

Recommending someone puts the recommender’s own standing at risk. If the person they sent to a friend disappoints, the friend remembers who sent them.

Here is the course’s view of what that means for a first conversation. An influential person is careful about whose name they pass on. So while you talk, they are working out whether they would be comfortable sending you to a friend.

People like the people they work alongside

In Influence, Robert Cialdini explains that people prefer to say yes to those they like. His firm’s site names three reasons one person comes to like another. People like those who are similar to them and those who pay them compliments. They also like those who work with them toward a shared goal.

The third reason is the one a room gives you. A room is a group you go back to on a schedule and do a job for. Examples include a museum committee, a parents’ association, and a club’s tennis ladder. You and the influential person already share its work. Dana and Helen both want the lectures to go well. Talking about the lectures reminds Helen that the two of them share that goal.

Here is the course’s view of why a pitch costs so much. When Dana asked Helen to pass her name along, Dana stopped being a fellow volunteer. She became someone who wants something from Helen. From then on, Helen was weighing the favor, not the person asking for it.

So talk with someone influential about the work you share. Leave your business out of it unless they ask.

A designer’s lunch that was not about design brought her a client

Jaclyn Isaac is an interior designer in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. In 2023, Business of Home asked designers where they had found clients. Isaac said one of hers came through a networking group she belonged to before the pandemic. She asked the group to introduce her to a developer in her area.

The developer came to lunch and brought a friend along. The three of them got along well. Then the developer and the friend asked whether Isaac had been to a speakeasy in Hoboken. She had not, and they went together.

Isaac said that she and the friend “weren’t really talking about design.” They talked about real estate. Only later did the friend mention that she wanted to make some changes in her home.

Over cocktails at four o’clock on a Wednesday, Isaac offered to take on the project. The friend became her client.

The friend was a guest at lunch, not a board member, yet the conversation went the way Dana’s second one did. It started with something both sides cared about, and the need came up inside it. In your room, keep the talk on what the other person cares about, and let them raise the need.

Send one useful name or answer within a week

A follow-up that asks for nothing is the course’s suggestion, and here is the reason. When you help the person and ask for nothing, you are still a fellow member of the group. The follow-up also gives them a second reason to remember your name. Dana’s email held one name, the appraiser that Helen’s mother needed.

The follow-up is tied to something the person said. It might be a name they need, a date they asked about, or the answer to a question they raised. If you cannot reach them directly, ask where to send it, as Dana did. You can also send it through the group’s chair.

Why a follow-up with a pitch in it goes wrong

Imagine a family photographer named Corinne Abbott who runs the raffle at her children’s school fair. Mrs. Delacroix, the parent whose choices the other parents follow, stops at the raffle table. Corinne asks Mrs. Delacroix how she came to chair the parents’ association, and they talk about the fair. Mrs. Delacroix mentions that her parents have their 50th anniversary in June. The family has not had a photo taken together in years, she says, and her parents’ wedding album is falling apart.

That evening, Corinne writes to Mrs. Delacroix between two editing jobs. She thanks Mrs. Delacroix for the chat and attaches her price list for family sessions. “I have two Saturdays open in June,” she writes. “Would you have time for coffee next week?”

Mrs. Delacroix replies that she will keep it in mind. The family books a photographer that her sister found. Mrs. Delacroix does not mention Corinne to the other parents.

The email told Mrs. Delacroix why Corinne had asked about the fair. Here is the course’s view of what that costs. Once a person sees what you came for, they take everything friendly you said before as part of the pitch.

In the version that works, Corinne sends one name, a bookbinder who restores old albums. The email says nothing about photos or June. In May, Mrs. Delacroix asks Corinne whether she is free for the anniversary.

Holding back too much goes wrong as well. Suppose Helen asks what Dana does, and Dana says, “Oh, a bit of everything with houses.” Then Helen has nothing to pass on to her mother. When you are asked, give your one clear sentence, and then let the conversation move on.

How to talk with someone influential in your room

1. Open with their part in the group, not with yourself. Ask how they got involved, or what they thought of the evening. For example, a tutor who helps with the library’s book sale can ask the board chair, “How long have you run the sale?”
2. Ask one more question about their answer before you say anything about yourself. For example, a dog walker who hears that the garden club’s chair started its plant sale can ask, “What did the first sale look like?”
3. If they ask what you do, answer in one sentence. Then turn back to them or to the group’s work. For example, a private chef can say, “I cook for families who entertain at home.” Then she can ask about the next meeting.
4. If they raise a need you can help with, say that you can help, and let them choose the next step. For example, an interior designer can say, “Kitchens are most of my work. If you’d like a second opinion before the builder starts, I’m happy to look.”
5. Within a week, send one useful name or answer tied to something they said. Leave out your price list, your website, and any request to meet. For example, an event planner might hear that the chair’s son is choosing colleges. She can send the open-day dates for the two schools he named.
6. Keep doing your job for the group as before, whether or not they reply. The next conversation happens there.

Next: You will see how to raise your price in stages, so that new clients pay the new price first. Your income holds while your client list changes.