Imagine for a moment that you’re trying to figure out how to build and grow a customer base. Or, if that’s not your thing, imagine you’re trying to figure out who you ought to mentor. Or, if you need something more basic, imagine you’re trying to sort out who to date. In any of these instances what you’re really trying to do is build relationships. Some of us are good at it, some of us stink at it, but all of us need to do it really to be successful in life.

Look again at those three scenarios. Beyond just building relationships what’s REALLY going on there is a desire to build ever deepening relationship and THAT takes work. It’s work that move people closer to each other, work that builds bonds.  In fact I want to suggest that people enter into deeper relationship based on increased levels of agreement.

Think about that statement for a second. You probably can’t name a single person with whom you have any depth of relationship AND with whom you completely disagree. It just doesn’t happen. (Except perhaps with some random members of your spouse’s extended family but that is a unique category.) There is always a “something” that draws us towards some people and away from others, towards one product and away from others, towards one service provider over another and that “something” is the level of agreement.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you and your close friends agree on everything, nor does it mean you like all the same things, nor does it hint at some sort of bizarre, cliquish, neo-cloned relational similitude. What it means is that the relationship itself is moving through four levels of agreement.

We’ll look at each of these in the days ahead but in overview the four levels are as follows:

• Level  1 – Cognitive Resonance
• Level  2 – Completed Response
• Level  3 – Contractual Responsibility
• Level  4 – Committed Rapport

So what in the world is Cognitive Resonance?

It’s the brain buzz, the ‘click’, the “hey, that looks interesting”. It’s that thing that happens when the server walks by with someone else’s food and you start madly scrambling for the menu to see if you can figure out what that was because “THAT looked goooood.”

It’s that moment in a conversation with someone you’ve just met where you start to pay closer attention because you were suddenly struck with the thought, “Hey, I think there could be more to this person.”

It’s that third recommendation of a restaurant that makes you think, “Yeah, we should check that place out.”

Years upon years ago I was working with a bunch of crazy Junior-high kids in San Diego and, as happened every summer, we took a bunch of them to camp. The first night of camp the guy who was serving as the “men’s dean” for the week introduced the women’s dean as the “cutest girl in camp”. Being a guy in my mid-twenties I obviously took a more than a passing interest in THAT pronouncement and thus invested a more than casual glance. While I had to objectively agree with his assessment I was, at the time, engaged to be married only a few months hence, and thus I took no other action. No, really, I promise, I didn’t do anything.  Until the next morning.

When the “cutest girl in camp” got up on stage to do her morning announcements and devotional with the kids I experienced a SIGNIFICANT moment of cognitive resonance.  (No, I did not think in those terms.)  What I did think was:

“Wow, she’s pretty sharp… and funny… and pretty good at what she does, and…man, I’m thinking that what I’m seeing here may answer a couple questions I’ve been asking… and…”

See where that’s going? Yeah, that’s where it went. We got married a year later and have been married for 21 years.  To be fair, and transparent, our relationship moved through all four levels of agreement over the course of that year but it all started with the moment of cognitive resonance.
Who are the people in your life today, probably in the category of acquaintances at the moment, with who you’ve had that twinkling of an ah-ha moment, that moment of cognitive resonance?

If you’re looking to build a customer base what are you doing to provide those moments of cognitive resonance for your prospects?

Have you had a personal experience where you can clearly identify the moment that cognitive resonance first took place?