.png)
Emotional Touchpoints
- Alon Zaibert
- Aug 11
- 3 min read
I got a call earlier today:
“Hi, Alon, I got your number from Laura (fake name), one of your clients, who said you could help me.”
“Well, thank you for calling,” I replied (while jotting a note to send Laura a thank-you gift for thinking of me). “What’s the situation and how can I help?”
She explained she’s a VP of Sales. She and one of her sales executives had just wrapped a strategy call with a client they’ve had for over a year and a half.
“The challenge,” she said, “is that everything seems fine — but nothing is moving forward. No upselling, no cross-selling. Too quiet for me. I’m not sure how to crack through.”
“Who’s running point?” I asked.
“That would be Lisa,” she said, “one of our Client Success Managers.”
“Does Lisa know the client well?”
“Well… what’s ‘well’?”
“Does Lisa know who’s talking to whom? The needs of each person they’re communicating with? Has anyone on your team built emotional touchpoints with the client?”
I gave her some homework:
Pull together a list of everyone on the client’s side, including Lisa and anyone else from her team with whom she is in contact.
Identify what they know about each person’s personal and professional goals, aspirations, and challenges.
Review how often and in what manner anyone from her team has connected with them in the last six months.
The following week, we reviewed her findings. The team interacted with five client contacts:
Project Manager
VP Operations
Business Development Manager
Director of Finance
Chief Revenue Officer
To her surprise, no one really knew these people’s goals — not personal, not professional.
Here’s the thing:
"If you don’t know someone’s aspirations or challenges, how will you ever know what to offer them? Or how to help them achieve their goals?"
— Alon Zaibert
Think about your current clients. Do you know their goals? Their pains? Personally and professionally? If not, consider sending them a short email like this:
“…as part of our ongoing relationship and to understand our clients better, I’d really appreciate it if you could answer the following:
In your ideal world, what would our partnership look like a year from today?
What are the top three ways our solution has helped you so far?
What are your biggest headaches at work right now, and can our solution solve any of them?
Where would you like to see yourself in two years?”
Trust me — you will get responses. You will understand your clients better. And they will appreciate you asking. Not only will your conversations become more personal, you’ll also know how to help them along their journey — and identify where you can offer more value.
Three Things We Discovered About Their Touchpoints
Sporadic contact. Once a month with one person, rarely with another, weekly calls with a third (but they only attend a third of the time), and none at all with others.
Purely work-related. Sure, there’s a minute or two of chit-chat, but nothing beyond surface-level personal info.
No video — ever. Except for one unconfirmed time, all virtual meetings were voice-only.
My Recommendations
Schedule regular touchpoints. Different frequency, length, and mix of participants depending on the relationship.
Get personal. The third pillar of Emotional Relevance is just that — get to know the people you work with. Share something about yourself, show you care, and they’ll reciprocate. That’s when you discover their real needs and desires.
Turn your video on. If you were in a room together, you wouldn’t cover your face. Seeing each other changes the vibe, deepens the conversation, and builds trust. If they don’t turn theirs on at first, keep yours on — they’ll follow.
The VP of Sales thanks me and says she will go ahead and follow these recommendations. She asked me for weekly calls with Lisa for the coming couple of months for some guidance, and we scheduled a follow-up call.
3 months went by.
Stories from the team of vulnerable interactions, emotional experiences, and personal discoveries kept coming in.
Testimonies of “different vibe”, “more fun”, and “much better feel” were chimed throughout teams calls.
Lisa shared that during a recent call, while everybody on the call was giving each other a hard time, their Chief Revenue Officer volunteered some new information about some of the company’s goals, seeking advice from Lisa and the team.
At the end of the day, if you want to make sure they trust you and feel comfortable opening up, you need to touch them — emotionally. Ask about what they want. Show them a bit of your world. Be human. The more trust you build, the more they’ll open up — and the better you can serve them.
Because when it comes to relationships, if there’s no touch, what’s the point?
Comments