Marketing lessons: Go and find the hook

The other day one of my collegues in office, (we are both in marketing), was talking to one of the customers who was hardcore north indian in English. Somehow it looked so artificial, so dry,  felt as if nothing was coming out of inside, it all seemed  painted from outside. My collegue himself is very fluent in Hindi and I kept telling him that the best way when talking to customers is to talk in the language that they understand best.  If you dont know the language, try to use atleast some phrases that you might have picked up from somewhere, or atleast learn some of the phrases in different languages. Or if that does not work possible, you could always talk about the festivals, that you might thing that person might be celebrating, it could be Pongal, Ed or deepawali. It would be tourist places near the customers destination, or could be food or anything. 

I remember sometime back, I had a conference call with some guys in New Zealand, it was the time when some interesting cricket match going on between India and Australia. And I was asking them about what they thought, and it sparked out with a small snippet of conversation, and this guy was remarking how it always pleased him if Tendulkar made century against Australia.  And it did make rest of the conversation little lighter. Atleast it always ensures that the customer will not shout at you. Somehow it lightens up the whole thing. 

Nothing works better than trying to find some hook, with which you can connect and relate to the customer. I really think it goes a long way in building relationships. Most importantly it makes the conversation more interesting.  

I dont know how it works for other relationships, but trust me it definately works for marketing.

So go and find the hook... :)