When there were old-school parking meters in New York, quarters were precious.

One day, I’m walking down the street and I guy comes up to me and says, “Do you have a dollar for four quarters?” He held out his hand with four quarters in it.

Curious, I engaged with him. I took out a dollar bill and took the four quarters.

Then he turned to me and said, “can you spare a quarter?”

What a fascinating interaction.

First, he engaged me. A fair trade, one that perhaps even benefited me, not him.

Now, we have a relationship. Now, he knows I have a quarter (in my hand, even). So his next request is much more difficult to turn down. If he had just walked up to me and said, “can you spare a quarter,” he would have been invisible.

Too often, we close the sale before we even open it.

Interact first, sell second.

Posted on Seth’s Blog by Seth Godin / Read the Whole Post Here

Seth makes a great point with this recent post on his blog.  The world’s best salesmen will agree that you need to sell yourself and build a relationship before you sell your product.  Once you have built friendship and trust with another person, your product should sell itself.

This message ties in perfectly with a Tim Ferris video I found a few weeks ago on YouTube (Video Embedded Below).  Tim tells a story of a trip to South by Southwest (SXSW) before The Four Hour Workweek was released.  He met and hung out with many influential bloggers for days without saying anything about his upcoming book.  By the time they asked about it, they already had built a relationship with Tim and were more than happy to help him out with promotion.  The key was that he had earned their trust.  If Tim were to have introduced himself and immediately began plugging his book, people would have likely been more hesitant to help him out.

My goal over the next year is to build long-term relationships, grow my personal brand, and expand my network.  I trust that with those pillars in place, my products will have no problem selling.