Elite Business Connector Podcast
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Elite Business Connector Podcast
Top Ten Mistakes People Always Make in the 1st 5 Minutes - 025
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You're not losing deals in the pitch. You're losing them in the first five minutes.
In this episode, we break down the 10 specific, identifiable, and fixable mistakes business professionals make before a conversation ever gains traction and why most people don't even realize they're making them.
We unpack two critical categories:
- Setup Failures — skipping pre-meeting research, defaulting to generic small talk, ignoring room cues, centering yourself over the other person, and missing their name entirely
- Engagement Failures — asking surface-level questions, dominating the conversation, leaving meetings having learned nothing, assuming you already know the pain point, and flipping into hard-sell mode
"They care about whether you care about their story." That one shift — from performing to discovering — is what separates elite connectors from everyone else in the room.
0:00 - The cost of a bad first five minutes
1:10 - Who this episode is for
2:30 - The two categories: Setup Failures & Engagement Failures
2:59 - Mistake #1: Skipping the Five Before the Five
6:00 - Mistake #2: Wasting your opening on useless small talk
8:59 - Mistake #3: Not reading the room
11:35 - Mistake #4: Making it about you, not them
14:40 - Mistake #5: Not concentrating on the other person's name
17:23 - Free cheat sheet resource
18:43 - Mistakes #6–10: The Engagement Failures
18:48 - Mistake #6: Asking little to no questions
22:01 - Mistake #7: Talking more than listening
25:12 - Mistake #8: Failing to learn anything from the conversation
28:02 - Mistake #9: Assuming you know the customer's pain point
30:58 - Mistake #10: Turning into a cold hard seller
34:09 - Full recap of all 10 mistakes
35:24 - 3 action items to apply immediately
36:39 - Closing thoughts
37:34 - Sneak peek: Episode 26 with Dr. Garland Vance
38:04 - Subscribe, share & connect
39:03 - Sign off
Download Free Cheat Sheet
https://bryanpaulbuckley.systeme.io/episode-025-cheat-sheet
Resources to Use:
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The Hidden Deal Killer
SPEAKER_00Let me ask you something. What if the biggest reason you're losing deals or losing connections and losing relationships isn't what you think it is? Most people blame the pitch, they blame the price, they blame the timing. But what if the damage was already done in the first five minutes? What if the conversation was over before it really even started? Well, today I'm going to talk and walk through the 10 mistakes, 10 specific, identifiable, fixable mistakes that business professionals make every single day in the opening minutes of a business conversation. And I promise you, by the time we're done, you're going to hear yourself in at least three of them. Ready to get personal? Let's get to it.
Why First Impressions Decide Outcomes
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Elite Business Connector Podcast, where we believe how you interact with people will make or break your opportunity to develop a real and influential connection. Now, whether you're a rookie or a rock star with people, you're in the right place right now. Let's do this. I'm your host, Brian Buckley, husband of one, father of five, and on a mission to help you develop, deepen, and master your business communication skills. And my promise to you is if you listen and subscribe, I'm going to bring my best content and energy every single week to help you get better at communicating and connecting in a business environment. Now, if you're in sales, or if you're in leadership, customer service, or hospitality, or if you're in any business where relationships matter, and let's be honest, what business isn't? You're in the right place. Because here's the big idea for today's podcast. There are key mistakes that are done in almost every single business conversation that are dramatically affecting your outcome, but are completely avoidable. Most professionals treat the opening minutes like a runway, something you just get through before the real conversation begins. They use it for small talk, for a setup, for pleasantries. They think the important stuff actually comes later, but it doesn't. Research confirms what elite connectors already know. Trust is formed, broken, or permanently limited in the opening minutes of any business interaction. First impressions don't just fade. They filter everything that comes after them. Every claim you make, every solution you offer, every ask you place, it all gets evaluated through the lenses of how that person experienced you in the first five minutes. Which means the mistakes you make in those minutes aren't small mistakes. They are load-bearing mistakes. They hold up or bring down everything else. And today we are naming 10 of them. 10 mistakes, two categories. The first five minutes and the first five are what I call set of failures. The mistakes that happen before and at the very start of the conversation. Now the second five are the engagement failures, the mistakes that unravel what little connection you manage to build. So let's start at the top with mistakes one through five, the set of failures.
Mistake One Skipping Simple Prep
SPEAKER_00Mistake number one, skipping the five before the five. Let me start with the one mistake that makes all the others worse. Skipping what I call take the five before the five to find the five. Almost everyone rolls in cold, walking into a business meeting, just letting the conversation go wherever it takes you. It's 99% reactive and often 99% lost time. Nothing bad, but nothing really good either. If you've been listening to this show, you know what the five before the five is. It's pregame. It's intentionally taking five minutes to find five connection points. You research the person, you check LinkedIn, you identify an LTP, a lead talking point, and you look for a mutual connection, a recent accomplishment, something specific about who they are and what you can see in them that you can anchor when you walk in the room. When someone skips a step, they're in improv mode and should be booed off the stage. And here's the thing: they often don't even know they're unprepared because they've always done it this way so many times that winging it feels, well, just natural, part of the experience. It's not. Here's a story to illustrate this mistake. A sales rep finally lands a meeting with the VP of operations. He's been chasing for three months. He shows up on time, dressed well, ready to present. But he never looked the guy up, never checked LinkedIn, never Googled the company's recent news. Turns out the company had announced a major restructuring just two weeks earlier. It was all over their website, all over LinkedIn. The VP mentions it in his first 60 seconds. The ref smiles and nods like he knew. And the VP knew he didn't. The trust was gone before the coffee was even poured. Three months of pursuit, erased in 60 seconds, because he skipped the prep. Here's what the research says. A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that pre-interaction preparation, specifically knowing relevant background information about the person you're meeting, significantly increases perceived competence and likability in first impressions. The researchers conclude that preparation signals respect, and respect is the foundation of trust. But what are five connection points? These are five creative. You've got my attention points that matter to the other person. They show you did your homework and making it about them and not about you. They're points that create a head turn, if you will, in the other person, and something they'll want to talk about instantly because it's unique to their world. You want to be trusted? Prepare like it matters because it does. The point: don't skip the five before taking the five to find the five.
Mistake Two Defaulting To Small Talk
SPEAKER_00Mistake number two: wasting your opening comments on useless small talk. Kind of like, how about this weather? Did you catch the game? Crazy traffic out there. These are not really conversation starters, they are conversation placeholders. They're what people say when they haven't thought about what to actually say. And here's why this matters so much. Your opening comments are your most valuable real estate. The other person is the most alert, most evaluative, and most impressionable in those first few seconds. And you're using them to talk about parking? Nice going, Ace. The antidote is not skipping warmth. Warmth is essential. The antidote is specificity, an opening comment that references something you noticed in the room about the person from your five before the five prep. And immediately signals that you are different from every other person they've talked to today, possibly even that week. And that's an OQ-driven opener, observational intelligence. And it changes the entire temperature of the conversation. Here's a story to illustrate this point. A financial advisor meets a high net worth prospect at a charity gala. She has maybe five minutes before the dinner program begins. She opens up with the weather, then the parking, then a comment about the food. The prospect is polite but completely disengaged and indifferent. When she follows up the next week, the prospect doesn't remember her name. Meanwhile, another advisor of the same event opened by referencing a specific cause the prospect had publicly championed on LinkedIn. One sentence, specific, genuine, and that advisor got the follow-up call. This was the same room, the same prospect, same five minutes, but completely different results because one person did the work and the other defaulted to autopilot. Here's what the research says. Research from Northwestern University at Kellogg School of Management found that people who open conversations with personalized, relevant observations rather than generic pleasantries are rated significantly higher on both warmth and competence. Generic small talk, the study noted, is perceived as low efficient in effort and signals low interest in the other person. Low interest. That's how small talk reads. Not friendly, not warm, low interest. Lead with something real. Remember, elite business connectors don't do what everyone else does, not just to be Joe opposite, but because it doesn't work. And simply it's just not effective. Now I challenge you to not make this mistake, but go in eyes wide open and catch someone's attention with smart talk, not small talk.
Mistake Three Missing Room Signals
SPEAKER_00Mistake number three, not reading the room. This means zero OQ, observational intelligence. Now, this is the ability to notice what most people walk right past. It's noticing what others miss. Zero OQ looks like this. You walk into someone's office and you never notice the family picture on the desk, the award on the wall, the college pendant above the window, or the fact that the person sitting across from you seems distracted, guarded, or flat out exhausted. You don't notice any of it. You just proceed with your agenda like the room doesn't exist, and the person in it is ready for whatever you've prepared. High OQ practitioners treat the environment as a data source. Every visual cue, every behavioral signal, every piece of body language. It's information. And that information tells you how to open, where to take the conversation, and sometimes most importantly, what not to do. Here's a story that illustrates this mistake. A corporate trainer walks into a client's conference room for a kickoff meeting. The team is seated, arms across, minimal eye contact, two people still on their phones. What's he do? He launches right into his opening. Beat, energetic, lots of enthusiasm, completely misreading what the room was telling him. Now, what he didn't know, and what a 60-second read the room should have suggested, was that the team had just come from an all hands where layoffs were announced. His energy didn't land as professional, it landed as tone deaf. The client never brought him back. Now, a trainer with high OQ would have noticed the body language, paused, acknowledged the heaviness in the room, and adjusted before saying a single word. That's OQ. Here's what the research says. Dr. Nick Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, whose work on egocentrism in communication has been widely cited, found that people routinely overestimate how well they read social cues in real time. His research shows that high performance in relationship-based professions are distinguished not by what they say first, but what they notice first and how quickly they calibrate based on what the environment and the other person are signaling. Read the room isn't a soft skill, it's a strategic one. And the first five minutes, it can be the difference between clicking and clashing.
Mistake Four Leading With Yourself
SPEAKER_00Mistake number four. Making it about you and not about them from the start. Here it is, the big one. The most common mistake and the most costly one, walking into the first five minutes and making it about you. Like you're the guest of honor, and they're here to see you, the hero. You can feel the logo on your shirt or your business card entitles you. And that's all that you need. Now, I get it. The impulse is natural. You want to establish credibility. You want them to know you're qualified, experienced, and worth their time. So you talk about your company, your background, your results, your clients, your awards. You build the case for yourself. But here's the problem. In the first five minutes, self-promotion is self-sabotage. Now, my three-phase arc exists to name this trap and reverse it. All about me, all about you, to all about us. The entire architecture of that framework is built on one truth. The person across from you doesn't care about your story yet. They care about whether you care about their story. Did you catch that? They care about whether you care about their story. And the only way to demonstrate that is to ask about it, listen to it and honor it before you say a single word about yourself. Here's a story to illustrate this mistake. Two consultants pitch the same perspective, client, on the same day. The first spends his opening 10 minutes walking through his firm's history, case studies, and awards. The second opens with a single question. Before I say anything about what we do, what's the one thing you're hoping changes as a result of whoever you bring in? The client spent the next 20 minutes talking. The second consultant barely said a word. The second consultant got the contract. Imagine that. When the client was asked why, she said, the first guy told me everything about himself. The second one actually cared about us. Here's what the research says. Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino's research on the power of asking questions found that people who ask more questions, especially in the first meeting, are rated significantly more likable and more competent than those who are equivalent in self-promoting. Gino's work reinforces something we say on this show all the time. Curiosity is perceived as a form of respect. And respect built connection faster than credentials ever will. Stop selling yourself. Start being curious. The connection comes first. Everything else comes after. And here's the money phrase that I say often it's look at you, not look at me. This one shift will be a game changer for you if you can truly implement these seven critical words in the first five minutes. Remember, be interested, not interesting.
Mistake Five Forgetting Their Name
SPEAKER_00Mistake number five: not concentrating on the other person's name. This one is deceptively simple and devastatingly common. You're introduced, you hear the name, and it's gone, evaporated before they've even finished saying it. But why? Because at that moment, most people are so focused on everything else but the other person's name. If it's me, I'm soaking in your look, your vibe, your energy, and sadly, not your name. I'm also thinking about what I'm gonna say that is so clever, so my focus is everywhere but their name. Ugh. And yet a person's name is the most personally significant sound in any language to them. Missing it doesn't just cost you a memory task. It signals something deeper, that you're more interested in the transaction than the person. Ouch. The fix is intentional. When you hear a name, repeat it immediately. Use it once or twice, naturally in the first five minutes, and at the goodbye. If it's unusual or unfamiliar, ask how to say it correctly. That question alone, I want to make sure I'm saying your name right, is one of the most respectful things you can do in the very first interaction. Now, episode 15 drills down deep into how to remember names and how to nail the name every single time. So I encourage you to go back and listen to episode 15. So here's a story to illustrate this mistake. A sales rep named Ted claimed he was great with faces but bad with names, and used that as an excuse all the time to not remember someone's name. I challenged him that remembering names is not a memory issue, but a focus issue. Slowly, meeting by meeting, he began to concentrate on the other person's name, implementing what he learned in episode 15, and now he nails the name every single time. Here's what the research says. Dale Carnegie's foundational insight, later validated by neuroscientists at MIT's McGovern Institute, established that hearing one's own name activates unique neural pathways associated with self-relevance and positive emotion. A study in brain research confirmed that the brain responds to its own name, even in states of distraction, reinforcing that name recognition is one of the most powerful signals of attentiveness one person can offer another. The name is not a formality, it's the first test of whether you're truly paying attention and care about the other person. Remove this mistake from your first five minutes and prioritize enaling the name.
Grab The Free Cheat Sheet
SPEAKER_00Before we get into the second half of today's episode, I want to make sure you have something in your hands that you can actually use. I put together the 10 mistakes that kill the first five minutes. It's a one thing. Take advantage of these resources to submit what you hear in this episode to separate yourself as an elite business connector. Just go to the show notes and download this valuable cheat sheet resource today. Okay, we've covered the five setup failures. Mistake number one, skipping the five before the five. Mistake number two, wasting your comments on useless small talk. Mistake number three, not reading the room. Mistake number four, making it about you and not about them from the start. And mistake number five was not concentrating on the other person's name.
Engagement Failures That Unravel Trust
SPEAKER_00Now let's get into the five mistakes that unravel everything you work to build in those opening minutes. These are the engagement failures, and they are sneaky because they often happen after a strong start. Mistakes six through ten, the engagement failures.
Mistake Six Asking Weak Questions
SPEAKER_00Mistake number six, asking little to no questions. This mistake has two layers. The first layer is asking no questions at all. Turning the conversation into a monologue and leaving the other person feeling like an audience, not a participant. That's bad enough. Or we just comment our way through the entire conversation. You make a comment, I make a comment. You make a comment, then I make a comment, you make a comment, I make a comment the entire time. The second layer, and this is the more dangerous one, reflexive surface-level questions that go nowhere and signal that not only did you not prepare, that you really don't even want to know. So, how long have you been in the business? What do you guys do exactly? These are questions asked to check a box, not to discover a person. And then my pet peeve is what I call boomer asking. This is a question that asked that you have no desire to know, the other person's answer. Well, why? Because you asked a question for the sole reason that you can answer that very question. So what did you do this weekend? And as soon as the other person breathes, you answer one upping the other person bragging about your incredible weekend. Come on, man. Here's a story to illustrate this mistake. I'm at a networking event. I run into a guy who, within 90 seconds, has asked where I'm from, what I do, and how long I've been doing it. But he hasn't generally listened to any of the answers at all. He's already scanning the room for his next stop. He nods at my responses and moves on. I can tell the guy he doesn't listen at all. The other guy asked me a question, only to boomer ask me so he could tell his story. Three minutes later, completely different conversation. Someone asked me one question, then asked a follow-up based on what I just said. Then another. 20 minutes disappeared. That person to me connected so quickly because of their questions. Same event, three conversations, completely different experiences. Here's what the research said. Harvard study on conversation and likability, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that people who ask follow-up questions, specifically questions that build on a previous answer, are rated significantly more engaging and trustworthy than those who ask unrelated sequential questions. The researchers called this responsive questioning and identified it as the single most underused skill in professional networking. Now, my framework called QQM means the second question minimum. The idea is simple. Never let a good answer just sit there. You use what they just said to go one level deeper, 2 QM. You follow the thread. The goal isn't to get through a list of questions, is to find the one answer that unlocks the real conversation, the most underused skill. And it costs you nothing to use it. Remember, most business professionals rarely ask a single question. So avoiding this mistake already sets you apart big time.
Mistake Seven Talking Too Much
SPEAKER_00Mistake number seven: talking more than listening. There's a ratio problem in most business conversations. The person who should be listening most is usually talking the most. You know this guy, he doesn't breathe. He finishes your sentence so he can start talking again. Hashtag not a fan. The reality is, we think we listen far more than we talk, but it's simply not true. As a business communication expert, I intently listened for ratios, then asked the other person what they thought was their talk-to-listen ratio. T2LR. Their response to my answer, they don't believe me. They argue with me. And the irony is they're proving their T2LR, talk-to-listen imbalance. Again, come on now. And here's the thing: locked-in listening, the full presence, fully engaged listening that makes people feel genuinely heard is the rarest communication skill in business. And also the most powerful. When you're talking, you're managing the conversation. When you're listening, you're learning it. The professionals who talk too much leave knowingly exactly what they want the other person to know. And knowing almost nothing about what the other person actually needs. And that's a terrible trait. Silence after a question isn't awkward, it's an invitation. Most people rush to fill it. Elite connectors let it breathe. Here's a story to illustrate this mistake. A sales manager was notorious on his team for dominating every client call. His team called it the monologue. Great stories, deep product knowledge, real charm, but clients consistently rated their interactions with him as one-sided. His close rate was lower than three of his direct reports who had half his experience. His manager finally pulled the call records and tracked the talk time ratio. He was averaging, ready for this, 74% of the air time. His top reps averaged 38%. The data changed everything. Within two quarters of consistently flipping the ratio, his numbers match the team's best. He didn't change his product knowledge. He didn't change his personality. He just stopped talking so much and started to listen. Here's what the research says: gong.io, whose research team analyzed over 1 million recorded sales conversations, found that top performing sales professors spoke an average of 43% of the time and listened 57% of the time. Bottom performers flipped that ratio. The study also found that the highest converting conversations featured the longest interrupted customer speaking streaks. Meaning the best salespeople weren't just talking less, they were creating space for the other person to go deeper. Here's the challenge: flip the ratio. Your result will follow.
Mistake Eight Leaving With No Learning
SPEAKER_00Mistake number eight, failing to learn anything from the conversation. This is the quiet failure, the one nobody notices, including the person committing it. You had the meeting, you shook the hand, you exchanged pleasantries, you maybe even asked a few questions. And when it's over, you could not name one meaningful thing you learned about the other person or their business or the way they like to do business that you didn't know going in. No new insight, nothing new revealed, no discovered tension, nothing to carry into your next interaction. And this is what happens when the conversation was never really a conversation. It was just two people taking turns talking. The first five minutes framework is built on the belief that every conversation should yield at minimum one discovery: something about who they are, what they care about, what they're wrestling with, what lights them up. If you leave empty-handed, you weren't really there. And it's a big mistake. So here's a story to illustrate this mistake. A business development director at a marketing agency kept a single practice. After every first meeting, she would write down three things that she learned about the other person that she didn't know going in. Not necessarily business facts, but personal discoveries, a passion, maybe a frustration, a dream they hadn't mentioned in passing, something that was important to them. And she kept these in a simple CRM note. So when she followed up, she referenced one of the three things specifically. Her response rate to follow-up messages was nearly double the agency average. Her colleagues thought she had a gift. She said, I just pay attention and write it down. How revealing is that? Here's what the research says. Dr. Carl Dweck's research on learning orientation versus performance orientation, developed at Stanford and applied broadly to professional communication, shows that professionals with a learning orientation enter conversations to discover, while those with a performance orientation enter to demonstrate. Deweck's work shows that learning-oriented professionals build stronger, longer-lasting relationships because the people they talk to feel genuinely known, not just assessed. In the first five minutes framework, I teach going all in. All is an acronym for ask, listen, learn. And this is the formula. Ask questions. Listen intently to their response with locked-in listening. And then learn everything you possibly can for now and later. Go into every conversation to discover something. One thing. That's all it takes to start.
Mistake Nine Assuming Their Pain
SPEAKER_00Mistake number nine. Assuming you know the customer's pain point, this is the trap often of experience. You've seen enough situations, solved enough problems, and heard enough pitches that you start pattern matching before the other person finishes their sentence. You assume you've heard this before. You assume you know the pain. You assume the solution. And in doing so, you stop listening and start pitching to a problem that may not even exist for this person in the way that you've imagined it. This mistake is especially dangerous because it feels like competence. You feel sharp, efficient, experienced. But what you've actually doing is robbing the other person of being understood and robbing yourself of discovering the real problem in their words, which is almost always different from your assumption. The first five minutes should be a discovery zone, not a diagnostic shortcut. Here's a story to illustrate this mistake. A veteran telecom account executive had sold to healthcare clients for 11 years. When he sat down with a new hospital system prospect, he was three sentences in before he had mentally written the proposal. Ah, I'd seen this before. He knew the pain. He presented the solution. The prospect, let's imply Lee, and said she'd be in touch. She never called back, never responded again. Months later, through a mutual contact, he learned the real issue wasn't what he assumed at all. It was an internal adoption problem with their existing system. Something a good five minutes of genuine questions would have revealed immediately. 11 years of experience became his blind spot. Here's what the research says: this phenomenon is well documented in the psychology of expertise. Research on what's called the curse of knowledge, grounded in the original work by economists Colin Kamer and George Lowenstein and Martin Weber, and popularized actually in the book by Chip and Dan Heath in Made to Stick, great book, demonstrates that experience increases, the ability to imagine not knowing something different, decreases. Experts consistently underperform novices in discovery conversations because they stop asking questions they believe they already know the answers to. Your experience is an asset everywhere, except sometimes in the first five minutes. There. It's a liability unless you check it at the door. What's the key? Don't assume you know the pain point. Don't wait for them to just tell you their challenge. Don't feel awkward asking. You want to hear it in their words. Identify their pain point by asking clarifying questions and hear how they communicate their challenge in pinpoint, then only to transition to the solution.
Mistake Ten Turning Into A Seller
SPEAKER_00Mistake number 10. Turning into a cold hard seller. This is the great betrayal of the first five minutes. Everything was going beautifully. You were warm, curious, attentive, engaged. The other person was opening up. You were clicking, and then something shifts. The mode changes. The questions stop. The listening slows. The agenda, it arrives in hard. You stop connecting and you start closing, and I mean hard. The other person feels it immediately. It's the emotional equivalent of someone dropping the mask. All of that rapport you build becomes collateral damage the moment they realize the curiosity was a runway to your pitch. My all about me, all about you, all about us arc is designed to prevent exactly this. All about us is not a sales close, it's a natural evolution where both people arrive at the conversation's next step together. The moment you abandon connection for conversion, you've both lost. Here's a story to illustrate this mistake. A sales seller spent the first 15 minutes of a prospect meeting doing everything right. Great questions, active listening, genuine curiosity about the prospect's family situation, and long-term goals. The prospect was actually opening up. Real conversation and connection was happening. Then, almost like a switch that was flipped, the sales rep glanced at his notes, shifted into presentation mode. Slides, numbers, projections, assumptions. The warmth evaporated. Poof! The process's body language closed down within 60 seconds. At the end of the meeting, the prospect said he needed to think about what was mentioned. He never scheduled the follow-up meeting. The seller lost the moment. He stopped being a person and became, well, a pitch. What happened? He turned into a cold, hard seller. Here's what the research says. Dr. Robert Gjaldin's foundational research on influence and persuasion, particularly the principle of liking from influence, establishes that people are significantly more likely to say yes to people they genuinely like and feel connected to. More specifically, his research shows that the moment a conversation shifts from relational to transactional, the psychological safety built in the opening phrase and phase collapses rapidly. People don't just resist the pitch. They mentally revisit and discount the connection that came before it, a direct correlation. The reality is, it's not an either or of connection or closing. The first five minutes of connecting with someone isn't something you compete and complete, then move on selling and turning into the typical salesperson, for example. You keep the connection continuing in the next 25 or 55 minutes of the meeting. Stay in connection mode. The right conversions and the right conversations lead to the right outcomes naturally.
Quick Review Of All Ten
SPEAKER_00Here's a quick review of the top 10 mistakes that kill the first five minutes. The five set of failures, mistake number one, skipping the five before the five. Mistake number two, wasting your comments on useless small talk. Mistake number three, not reading the room. Mistake number four, making it about you and not about them from the start. And mistake number five, not concentrating on the other person's name. Then we discussed five engagement failures. Mistake number six, asking little to no questions. Mistake number seven, talking more than listening. Mistake number eight, failure to learn anything from the conversation. Mistake number nine, assuming you know exactly the customer's pain point. And mistake number 10, turning into a cold, hard seller. So there you have it. How many mistakes are true of you if you were completely honest? Now, this episode is not meant to find you guilty and move on. I created it so you can notice which ones are your mistakes down. Button in hopes, you'll identify and self-correct over time to improve your business communication and connection skills.
Three Action Items To Apply
SPEAKER_00Three action items. All right. Ten mistakes. Now let's make them actionable. Here are three things I want you to do before your next business conversation. Action item number one. Learn to take the five before the five to find the five. Before your next meeting, any meeting, spend just five intentional minutes preparing. Look them up, find your LTP lead talking point. Find five connection points about them that most people walk into that room won't know. Don't show up cold. That nails a handful of these mistakes. Action number two. Track your talk ratio, your T2LR. In your next conversation, notice how much you're talking versus listening. If you can record it, do it. You may be surprised or possibly even alarmed by what you find. Your target, talk less than 50% of the time. Ask more, listen longer. Let silence work for you. And action number three: leave with one discovery. After your next conversation, write down one thing you learned about that person that you didn't know was going on. Just one thing: personal, professional, both, doesn't matter. If you can't name it, you weren't fully present. Make it a habit. It will change how you show
Closing Mindset On Real Connection
SPEAKER_00up. So here are closing thoughts from today. The first five minutes are not the setup. They're not the preamble. They're not the time to get comfortable before the real conversation starts. You nail the first five minutes, the next 25 or 55 minutes will dramatically feel different and will be more effective because you avoided the 10 mistakes everyone else makes. Every mistake we talked about today has one thing in common. It takes your attention off the other person and puts it on someone else, on your pitch, on your agenda, on your nerves, on your assumptions, on your phone, on you. Elite connectors, know that connection is an act of focus. It is a deliberate, consistent choice to be fully present with a human being in front of you, before the sale, before the ask, before the agenda. That's the standard. That's what the first five minutes demands. And you are more than capable of delivering it.
Next Episode Preview And Wrap
SPEAKER_00Here's a sneak peek in our next episode. Coming up in episode 26, I'll be interviewing author and leadership expert Dr. Garland Vance. So for you leaders out there or aspiring leaders, this interview is for you. Dr. Vance unpacks seven leadership issues that hold you back from your greatest impact on your team and how to change them. We also talk about the leader's role within the first five minutes. This is a great interview you don't want to miss. But this episode is officially in the books. In and out, no one got hurt. Don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. I also encourage you to download past episodes so you can listen at any time and not miss any episodes, past or present. And if you're watching me on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe and leave a comment. Let us know what resonates with you. And all of today's main points and links are in the show notes. And don't forget to grab your free cheat sheet, the 10 mistakes that kill the first five minutes, which is a great resource to make sure you never make these mistakes again. And if today's episode hit home, do me a favor, share with one person in your world who needs to hear it a colleague, a teammate, someone on your sales floor. This stuff works, but only if people know about it. And if you want to bring this content to your team, your conference, your next company event, reach out. I'd love to have that conversation. You can find me on LinkedIn or email directly at Brian at Brian BuckleySpeaks.com, Brian with a Y. And as my Chicago Bears chant, good, better, best, never let it rest till your good gets better and your better gets best. Until next time, keep improving your communication, conversation, and connection skills every day. But as my dad used to say, thanks for coming. But most of all, thanks for leaving. I'm out. You got this now. Now is your time to do something with this episode. And always remember to leverage your first five minutes to build connection, trust, and influence. You got this now.
