Would They Pick Up?

A couple of years ago I was standing in front of a packed room of sales executives in NYC, and I did something I had wanted to try for a long time.

I pulled out my phone, picked one of my clients, and called them. No warning. No setup. Live, in front of everyone.

They picked up.

“Hey Alon, I'm in the middle of a meeting. You good? You need anything?”

“No, all good,” I said. “We'll talk later.”

That was the whole call. A few seconds. Then I looked out at the room and asked one question: wouldn't you want to get to that level with every one of your clients?

The room got quiet. It usually does.

Think about what actually happened there. My client was in a meeting. They had every reason in the world to let it go to voicemail. They didn't. They saw my name on the screen, and something in them said pick up. Not because we had a deal on the table. Not because they owed me a call back. Because of what they FELT when my name showed up.

That feeling is real, it's measurable, and in my experience it's the hardest step on the whole meter.

If you've been reading Two Weeks Notice for a while, you know the Emotional Relevance Relationship Meter. Here's the quick refresher. Level 1 is strictly professional: email, scheduled calls, the office line. Level 2 is access: you have their cell phone number. Level 3 is functional trust: you're comfortable reaching out directly, but it's still all about work. Level 4 is emotional recognition: they see your name on the screen and they want to pick up. Level 5 is personal trust: you could ask them for personal advice, and it would feel natural.

Score every person on their side against every person on yours, weigh each one by the role they play (decision maker, champion, influencer, skeptic), and you get ERRA, the Emotional Relevance Relationship Algorithm. One number for the whole relationship. And that number moves with your closing rates and your retention rates.

Here's the uncomfortable part. When you score honestly, a lot of the relationships you'd call strong turn out to be a 3.

And a 3 is a comfortable place to live. Calls get returned. Meetings get booked. The QBR goes fine. Everything works, just enough. So nobody feels any urgency to change anything.

But a 3 is earned with competence. You were responsive, you delivered, you didn't drop the ball. That's great, and it's table stakes. Competence gets your call returned. It does not get you picked up in the middle of someone else's meeting.

Think about your own phone for a second. In a 2020 Pew Research Center survey, eight in ten Americans said they generally don't answer their cellphone when an unknown number calls. So yes, getting your name saved in their phone matters. But once your name shows up on that screen, it isn't neutral anymore. It carries a feeling. Happy, impatient, guilty, annoyed, curious. Your name has a reputation inside their head, and you built it one touchpoint at a time.

“Cultivate the relationship, not the opportunity.”

Alon Zaibert

So what actually moves someone from a 3 to a 4?

Not more activity. More of the same touchpoints just gets you a more reliable 3. What moves the needle is emotional anchors: moments that are about THEM, not about your agenda. A shared experience. A conversation that wandered somewhere personal and you remembered it. A text that says I saw this and thought of you, and then nothing else. No ask attached.

Go back to that live call. I didn't need anything. That's the whole point. If the only time your name shows up on their screen is when you need something, people learn exactly what your name means. And they learn to let it ring.

This is also why ERRA is not a CRM field and not something you score once and forget. Re-score your key relationships every month. The value isn't the number itself. It's the honesty. The moment you have to write down a 3 next to someone you've been calling a great relationship, you stop assuming and start being intentional.

Here's what that looks like in real life. We were working on a big deal with a large client of mine, and when we scored the relationship person by person, we found something nobody wanted to see. Their C-level, the person positioned as the executive on the deal, was at a 2 with the executive sponsor on the buyer's side. A 2. On the relationship that mattered most.

We also knew we still hadn't gotten to the real pain behind why they were buying. So we tried going through a 3 we already had, between our technical SME and theirs. It didn't get us much. Functional trust gets you functional answers.

The key was getting our C-level to a 3, or better, a 4, with their executive sponsor. It took seven weeks and three emotional anchors, including a golf tournament together. Then one more, designed intentionally and strategically: a one-on-one between the two of them, built to create that intimate executive setting where people speak freely.

Only then did our C-level allow himself to ask, in the most honest, non-salesy way, what was really going on. And we learned things we could never have figured out otherwise, including organizational moves they were planning. That changed our offering. We got the deal. And we got the relationship cemented.

A couple of months ago I saw a picture on social media of those two executives hugging, laughing, drinks in hand, dancing at one of their kids' weddings. I smiled. That's a 5.

Here's what I'd ask you to do this week.

Pull up your most important account. Write down the people on their side. Not the company, the people. Score each one honestly, 1 to 5.

Find one person who is sitting at a 2 or a 3 and who really matters: a decision maker or a champion.

Ask yourself the uncomfortable question: when they see my name on their screen, what do they feel? If you don't know, that's your answer.

Then, in the next seven days, reach out once with nothing to sell and nothing to ask. Make it about something you know about them. Let them know you were thinking of them. Act on the thought instead of stopping at it.

Put a reminder on your calendar for thirty days from now and score them again.

You won't move everyone. You don't need to. One 2 or 3 that moves up with the right person can change the entire shape of an account.

Competence gets your call returned. Relevance gets it answered.

Emotional Relevance that is.

Tags:  Client relationships  ·  Client Retention  ·  Being relevant  ·  emotional connections  ·  Client Engagement