"I Thought You Were My Friend": Why I Ask for an Opinion Before I Invite

"Mikael, I thought you were my friend."

My university friend Jason said that to me across a café table, early in my career. It's still the most painful sentence anyone has said to me in this business.

What I got wrong

We had known each other for years. I invited him for coffee, but catching up wasn't the plan. I had been to a lot of training, memorised a lot of lines, and I wanted to bring him into my team.

He asked how I was. I launched straight into the big-promise phrases I had learned: once in a lifetime, never work for a boss again, the whole speech.

His face changed as I talked. When I finished he said the words I opened with, and added, "None of that sounds like you. I've read those lines online a hundred times. You're selling to me, not talking to me."

He finished his coffee and left. Over the next month several of our mutual friends went quiet on me. I had lost a friend of ten years, and my name in that circle with him.

That night I asked myself what I had been thinking when I invited him. The honest answer was uncomfortable. I hadn't asked about his work, his worries or his goals. I had treated him as a target instead of a friend.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. — Sun Tzu

Statements create resistance. Questions create conversation.

Sun Tzu's highest form of victory is the one where nobody has to be forced. In an invitation, that means the other person wants to hear more because you made them feel respected.

After Jason I spent years testing different ways to open. The pattern was clear. Openings that make a statement, "I've got a great opportunity" or "You'll love this product", put people on guard straight away.

Openings that ask for the other person's view do the opposite. In my own comparison, far more people were happy to keep talking when I opened with a genuine question about what they thought.

How the opinion opener works

The opening is simple: "Can I ask you something? I'd value your opinion." Then you ask a real question connected to something they know about.

• To a friend who trains at the gym: "You know a lot about this. What matters most to you when you choose a supplement?"
• To someone senior in a company: "You've seen a lot of careers. What do professionals look for when they consider something on the side?"

Then listen properly, all the way to the end. If what they say connects naturally to what you do, tell them that, briefly, and ask whether they'd like to know more. If it doesn't, you've still had a good conversation with someone you respect.

It works for four reasons. It doesn't sound like a pitch. It puts the other person in the expert's seat. It starts a real two-way conversation. And they can feel that you are actually listening.

It isn't a new script

The opinion opener only works if the curiosity is real. Asked as a trick, it turns into another line people have heard a hundred times.

Bad questions give the game away: "Do you want to make extra money?" or "Are you open to an opportunity?" Both are still sales pitches wearing a question mark.

Jason did join my team, much later, and that's another story. I stopped raising the business with him for a long time. The friendship mattered more than any order, so I simply stayed his friend.

His sentence became the question I ask myself before every invitation. Before your next one, ask it too: right now, are you their friend, or their salesperson?