Never Say Sell

CHAPTER 13Discipline 2: Be a Good Friend

One of Jacob's favorite measures of a client relationship is a term he's dubbed “fridge rights.” Jacob has a close childhood friend named Riggs, who now lives in New York City, where he runs a real estate business. Jacob and Riggs know each other's families, colleagues, and even though they live on opposite sides of the country, their friendship never skips a beat. When Jacob is in New York to visit a client and stops by Riggs's West Village townhouse for dinner, a knock is superfluous. After a quick rehash of the latest in both business and family life, Jacob will walk straight to Riggs's fridge and grab his favorite New England IPA or tangerine La Croix. These are fridge rights. And they're earned, over time.

We like to think about setting a goal of  “earning fridge rights” with our clients. Not because we want to walk into their kitchen and help ourselves to a Coke. This, obviously, would be a high bar – and perhaps inappropriate. What we want is to approach client relationships with this mentality. It requires us to invest in the relationships and care about them as people – remembering that they just bought a new home, that their daughter is about to have her bat mitzvah, that we should send them a bottle of their favorite Chilean rosé when they get the news that their boss is really happy with the project.

Ford Harding, author of Cross-Selling Success, quotes Mike Palmer, a founder and partner at the consulting firm DiamondCluster: ...