At business lunch, let your client take the lead | The Honolulu Advertiser

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At business lunch, let your client take the lead | The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper

Posted on: Monday, April 24, 2006

At business lunch, let your client take the lead

By Dawn Sagario

Making clients comfortable is a knack perfected with humor, listening and maybe an alcoholic drink.

Picture this: You've taken a client out to lunch. During the meal, he or she wants to order a glass of wine.

The quandary: Do you follow your client's lead and partake of an alcoholic beverage? If you don't feel like drinking, should you still order something to make your client feel more at ease?

Author Robin Jay lets you in on the answer in her book, "The Art of the Business Lunch: Building Relationships Between 12 and 2" (Career Press Inc., $14.99). The answer isn't as easy as you may think.

"When you break bread with someone, magic can happen," she said. "You take that relationship to a higher level when you share a meal.

"Lunch is the best opportunity to go and take someone out to lunch and get to know them. People prefer to do business with people they like."

In her book, Jay breaks down the nuances and etiquette involved in meeting clients over a meal — everything from deciding where to dine, to whether you can take a call on your cell phone during lunch.

Jay, who has been dubbed the "Queen of the Business Lunch" by her clients, knows what she's talking about. She has been on 3,000 client lunches as an advertising account executive for more than 18 years. As a result, she said, her sales not only increased by 2,000 percent, she has been able to build solid, lasting relationships.

Jay said today's business lunch is a far cry from the "three-martini power lunch" of the 1980s, where workers would get hammered.

Lunch meetings now not only involve a more judicious use of alcohol, but more important, they involve finding common ground and showing a genuine interest in what is going on in others' lives, she said.

Her first tip is to be prepared — from having a list of appropriate restaurants handy (check Jay's Web site, www.robinjay .com, for the top 10 criteria when choosing a restaurant), to prepping yourself for casual conversation during the meal (avoid controversial topics like politics and sex).

More advice from Jay:

Alcohol. Follow your client's lead, but be cautious. One drink is fine, Jay says, but you should cut yourself off after that. If the client wants you to have another drink with him or her, be prepared with a response like, "I'm working on a budget this afternoon," or "I have a deadline." If you don't want to drink, choose something light like a wine spritzer, and if you want, just pretend to drink it, Jay recommends. This helps make "clients feel accepted ... and they don't feel judged. There's nothing that says you have to drink your drink."

Cell phones. "You should turn your phone off," Jay says. "Your clients can talk all they want, but you should not." If there's a family emergency and you're waiting for a call, tell your client at the beginning of the meeting about the situation and that you'll need to briefly take the call during the meal.

Talking too much. Being too chatty is the biggest faux pas. You need to remember to make this meeting about your client and learn to listen.

Having a sense of humor. Try to relax, Jay recommends. This can be tough, especially if you are really nervous about the meeting. If you're especially skittish, she says, bring someone along with you. "Don't lose your sense of humor. It will get you through a lot. Make it about them (the client); it's not about you."

Dawn Sagario writes for The Des Moines (Iowa) Register.

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