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I met a classmate 2 days ago. He is 28 year old and is a deputy general manager and is managing over 200 people. He often drinks with clients and gets drunk. His body is obviously wider than before, especially his face. His face is big so his eyes look small, just two lines. I feel his body is stronger than before, and he is full of high spirits. My question is, do we really have to drink with clients/prospects to get orders?

I told my classmate, if I was your prospect, as long as the price, quality, services, and payment terms are generally better than your competitors, I would buy the products from your company. He explained that the silent assumption is that “I" was an individual or a small company so "I" was able to find out everything(price, quality, services, payment terms) by myself. If a client is a big company, the decision maker has to rely on several departments to make a decision. For example, the decision maker needs to consult the quality department to find out which company offers the best quality. Since rare employees are purely selfless, he can always drink with them to win them over.

I think what he said makes sense. But I want to further explore this subject. What's your insight?

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In sales people buy from people that they like. Building common interests (family, hobbies, drinking!) builds stronger relationships.

This is a form of business networking, and at the senior levels is where most business deals start off if the person you are out drinking with is the decision maker or cheque writer.

For larger companies involving multiple departments you will find people who want to buy your product, people against (they want to give the work to their cousin brother) and neutral. Socialising and making friends here would help swing balance on a decision.

Different behavioural styles require different approaches. You will get go-getters and promoters (party-animals), and the other end of the spectrum examiners and nurturers (gentler folk). What is acceptable to one is not acceptable to the other.

If you only bought 1 drink only for a party-animal client, and expected them to pay the rest (when they would probably expect the entire evening to be paid for as entertainment), that would have a negative impact. If you started buying tons of drinks for a more reserved crowd, it would have a negative impact.

One thing you might want to read up on is DISC - it is a very interesting of human behaviour that can be applied to sales.

As a geek and family man I personally don't socialise as near as much as I should do, and it probably limits the amount of business I do with certain clients.

I think comment on the approach with the rum and cokes is excellent and I also do this. I would recommend learning about behaviour types, and depending on clients make the decision to invest in entertainment should the behavioural style fit.

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And there's a big difference from having a drink with someone and getting drunk. My personal strategy is buying the first round. It's a quick impact immediately and everyone is appreciative. I also only drink rum & diet cokes (so much I'm known for them). Then I can switch to just diet coke at any point and no one even realizes. – CaseySoftware Feb 15 at 4:42

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