How human you may be on a short call with a customer sounds like a matter of character. In the booklet it gets a precise answer, and it gets it exactly where the booklet's two sources disagree.

This is the only chapter in which the sources are divided. The disagreement is interesting, and what interests more is how much smaller it turns out to be.

The disagreement

The sales book opens its booking call with a personal line right after the name: a light question about how the customer is and whether they have been fishing lately. Straight away it adds a note in brackets, for anyone studying the script. Knowing your prospect helps, on one condition: “don't take up his whole afternoon.”

Notice that even the sales book, which allows the personal line, does not fully trust it. It allows the line and limits it in the same breath.

The management source bans small talk outright, and in both directions. If you ask about the customer's wife or drift into social chatter, it says, that will cost you dearly. If you let the customer ask about your wife or pull you into chatter, it costs you just as dearly.

Picture an owner who opens every call with two polite minutes of how are things. The call runs for twelve minutes and no date gets booked.

The opposite is the same owner opening with one sentence about something she noticed at the customer's business, then going straight to the point. The call takes three minutes and ends with a date in the diary.

They differ less than they seem

The way through is in the text itself. The sales book allows one line and fences it in at once. The management source bans a conversation. One line is not yet a conversation.

So the two agree on the practical rule, even if they disagree on tone. The opening has room for one sentence that shows the customer you know who you are talking to, and none for a dialogue.

That sentence is born before the call, out of the preparation: what you checked about the customer before you dialled. Without that, the only way to be personal is to ask, and a question already opens a conversation.

The difference between the two lies in form, and the number of words matters less. A statement closes itself, and a question opens a door.

Say you tell the customer that you saw they are recruiting for a new role. That is one sentence, it asks nothing, and it has no way to run on. The opposite is asking how business has been lately. An open question like that invites several minutes of answer, and there is no polite way to cut it off.

Why each source says what it says

A lesson here reaches beyond small talk. The two sources optimise for different things, and that explains the gap.

The sales book optimises for the chance that the offer is accepted. For it, a personal line buys agreement.

The management source is a 1974 policy letter on cost control, and its whole calculation is built on long-distance call charges. The currency burning there was billable minutes, and that currency no longer exists. It explains why the ban is so sharp: when every minute of a long-distance call costs money, every question about family adds to the bill.

The principle that survived is the right one: “the call has one product, and everything else competes with it.” Only the currency changed. Today you pay with the customer's attention and with hours of your own day. In a small business the caution about small talk stays right, for a different reason. A call no longer costs by the minute, and it still costs attention, which runs out faster than it seems.

Picture an owner who realised that a long call costs him the customer's interest, which runs out before the important part arrives.

Or a consultant who did simple arithmetic: twenty calls of twelve minutes make four hours a week. That is what she really pays.

This chapter also teaches how to read sources in general. When a source sounds too rigid, check what it was trying to optimise. Usually the rule survived and the context it was written for is gone.

The booklet gives this chapter two exercises, one to build and one to measure, plus self-check questions. From there it moves on to the calls that come from the other direction, from the customer to you.

On your next call, allow yourself one personal sentence, then go straight to the reason you rang.