What Happens When We Take Connections Off-Line In a Hybrid World
This is really a story about why it is worth choosing to take connections offline, even now.
I walked past her, having dodged the yellow and green tee shirts, the Akubra hats and the boomerang tattoo-ed faces of the kids.
Straining over the very loud rendition of Crowded House’s ‘When You Come’, I asked,
‘How is your meat pie?’
The look on her face told the story!
Because nothing beats an Aussie meat pie with sauce on a Saturday afternoon at an Irish pub anywhere in the world, especially Australia Day celebrations in Colorado.
In the matter of a few hours, Tim and I had not only had an amazing time by choosing to leave the confines of our apartment and heading out in the snow to a pub on the other side of town, but we had also made new friends, with both of us having so much in common and the promise of a leg ‘o lamb roast dinner on the calendar at Chez T&B’s soon.
There are a few reasons I shared this story:
đŠ After having come off the back of an isolating two years where the business platform has shifted to ‘hybrid’ – online connection through Zoom, Slack and other keyboard and screen based mediums, we have all experienced the convenience and productivity they provide which we will continue to leverage. But, how ‘easy’ has it become to reach out, respond or request things without truly reaching out and ‘connecting’ with those people.
đŠMany have condemned the antics of ‘keyboard warriors’ – those who hide their identity and bullying behaviour behind a keyboard, but I’m wondering how many ‘keyboard warriors’ there really are. Whilst they may not bully others, they feel awkward reaching out to people, wondering what to say and not wanting to bring all of themselves to the relationship, so they, too, hide behind their screens and keyboards. Then again, I may be wrong – some may be just plain lazy!
QUESTION: Who can you connect with personally this week in-person or by picking up the phone? A new prospect? A forgotten client? A new connection?
đšÂ My second point is that truly connecting in a face to face setting is an antidote to depression and addictive behaviours. Johan Hari presented his idea at TEDGlobal in London by saying âthe opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.â
đš His research over three years showed that behind any addiction is a feeling of isolation and inability to connect in a meaningful way with others. And that starts with a community.
đš And when we are in a community of like-minded souls, our body reacts. Our cortisol (stress) levels reduce, our blood pressure reduces and our oxytocin (bonding) levels increase.
đš So, hanging out with a group of Aussies who understand the nuances of inappropriately yelling ‘C’mon the Maggies’, having Vegemite eating competitions, Peter Garrett dancing or reverently bowing to the humble meat pie, sausage roll and dead horse (sauce) lifts the spirit and truly enables connection.
đš I reflect on why my life is so full and it is because of people – some who are individuals on the fringes and others in communities – and when I couple my desire to connect with those people and we make our relationship a two-way street, it fuels my happiness levels.
QUESTION: Who has reached out to you and might continue to reach out, yet you are not reciprocating or stoking that fire in return? Connection is a two-way street! Make your move!
đ Coming back to our new friends, Sally and Grant… they were just as happy to have met us, as we them, as our hugs when we said goodbye, showed. The level of connection when we meet someone face to face is heightened when you can look into someone’s eyes, tell stories, read body language and get a feel for who they are as people, and it is a huge differentiator.
đ According to research undertaken by MIT Human Dynamics Lab, the most valuable type of communication is done face to face with a physical handshake influencing better negotiations and typically 35% of the variation of a sales teams performance based on the number of times the team members speak face-to-face.
đ In thnking of the ways some of the recent layoffs have occurred where loyal employees have found out on-line or via email with zero personal and face to face interaction is devastating and only exacerbates feelings of isolation, disconnection and potential depression. Leaders you can do better than this!
This fact has only strengthened my resolve to contribute to more face-to-face sales leadership themed breakfasts here in my new home town of Denver, Colorado in 2023 to enable me to do what I love and am good at doing.
QUESTION: Where in your business world or personal life can you arrange a coffee meeting, a dinner, a Showroom Day, a VIP Day, a client breakfast or a face to face review so that you can shake hands, look into someone’s eyes and make the meeting more meaningful?
đȘ đȘ đȘ đȘ đȘ
Thank you for being a ‘connection’ of mine and I appreciate your supporting my ideas and writings. For those that want to have a conversation with me for any one of the three reasons above, I’m always up for it!
How to Take Connections Offline On Purpose
You do not need to take connections offline for every relationship – just the ones that matter enough to warrant it. A client renewal, a new hire, a team member who has gone quiet – these are the moments worth leaving the keyboard for.
Choosing to take connections offline sends a signal a Zoom call cannot: that this person was worth the extra effort, the travel time, the risk of an awkward silence that a screen would have let you edit around.
If you want your team thinking more deliberately about when to take connections offline and when hybrid tools genuinely serve the relationship, Bernadette McClelland’s keynote presentations dig into exactly this balance.
The teams who take connections offline as a habit, not an exception, tend to have the strongest relationships when things go wrong – which is exactly when a hybrid tool is least equipped to help.
Most sales teams never plan to take connections offline – it just quietly stops happening once the calendar fills with video calls. But the teams who deliberately take connections offline, even for a single coffee or a short walk-and-talk, report stronger trust and faster deals than the ones who stay purely digital. It doesn’t have to replace the hybrid tools; it just has to happen on purpose, on a regular cadence, with the people who matter most to the relationship.
If you’re weighing up whether to take connections offline with a client, a prospect, or your own team, start small. Pick one relationship this month where a screen has been standing in for a handshake, and take connections offline for a single real conversation. Notice what changes in tone, in trust, and in how quickly the next decision gets made. That one data point is usually enough to convince a skeptical sales leader that the effort is worth repeating.
There’s a simple test for whether a relationship needs you to take connections offline: ask yourself if you’d be comfortable having the same conversation on a park bench as you would on a scheduled video call. If the honest answer is no, that’s a signal to take connections offline before the next big decision, not after it. Sales leaders who build this into their coaching – reminding reps to take connections offline with their top accounts every quarter – consistently see shorter sales cycles and fewer late-stage surprises.
None of this means abandoning hybrid tools altogether. It means being deliberate about when to take connections offline and when a quick message will do. The salespeople who get this balance right treat “take connections offline” as a standing habit rather than an occasional exception, and it shows up in how their clients talk about them: not as another vendor on a screen, but as someone they actually know.
I’ve watched two reps sell the exact same product into the exact same market, and the one who chose to take connections offline every few weeks closed nearly twice as often as the one who stayed entirely in the inbox. That’s not a coincidence. When you take connections offline, you give the other person a chance to trust your tone, your timing, and your face – not just your grammar. If your pipeline has gone quiet lately, that’s often the clearest sign it’s time to take connections offline again.
Pic – My camera, Darcy’s Pub, Denver for Australia Day Celebrations
P.S. This is 100% BM Content with no AI.
P.P.S. I’d like to invite you to download your complementary copy of ‘How StorySelling will Kick Solution Selling’s Butt’ by clicking here.
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I’m Bernadette – founder of the Decision-Led Revenueâą Operating System and The Revenue Leader of Influenceâą, where I work with CEOs and sales leaders to build a sales team they can rely on to think, make the call, tell the truth about pipeline and own the result.
If any of this resonated – or if you’re staring at a revenue problem that feels like it should have been solved by now – I’d love a conversation.
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