One of my clients works in the roofing industry, and he was recently at a networking event where he met someone else in his industry. When the other person asked my client about his business, my client answered, saying, "Oh, you wouldn't be interested in what I do."
Naturally, that made him curious, so he pressed my client again for an answer. When my client responded, the other person told him that, interestingly enough, he is also in roofing.
He asked my client about his work, and my client threw him a couple of reverses, and after that the other roofer started telling my client all the things his company does, how they do them, and why they do them that way.
My client told me later that he couldn't help thinking that this guy was doing it all wrong! Right next to my client and the other roofer was a real estate agent who was listening to the entire conversation. After the other roofer finished his spiel and left the conversation, the agent exhaled and said, "Man, that guy just never shuts up!"
Of course, my client was polite about it, but he couldn't keep thinking about how much candy the other roofer was spilling. My client wasn't a prospect for the other roofer, but the real estate agent certainly was, and it was like the other roofer didn't even think about that fact.
He didn't succeed in making the agent prefer him to my client, if that was his goal—in fact, he only succeeded in making the agent think that he wouldn't want to talk to that guy any more.
It's important to remember that you're always on, even if you're talking to someone in your own industry and you know that they won't be doing business with you. You always have to be thinking about who else is a part of your conversation; who else could be drawing positive or negative conclusions from what you're doing.
You never know when they will make a snap judgment about you that determines whether or not they're even interested in doing business with you in the future.
