Host: Are there important things I should do on my first meeting?

Gloria MacDonald: One of the really important things to do when you are in that first meeting situation is to take clues from the other person. So, listen, look at their body language. The more you can reflect what they are doing, the more comfortable they will feel. It is subconscious, but its the way human beings work.

So for as a simple example, if you ask the other person if they have any children and they give you a relatively short answer saying, Yup, I have got two great kids, I have got a daughter who is five and I have got a son who is seven. Then when they ask you about your children, you also need to give a relatively simple answer. Dont go on for hours and hours and hours about your kids and what they do in soccer and what they do in basketball and how they take piano lessons and ballet. If the other person gave a brief answer, then you want to keep your answer fairly brief. Feel free to ask the person a little bit more about their kids but if they dont go on and on about it, then take that as a clue that thats not something they are comfortable about right, to talking about right now. So mirror their response in terms of the amount of information they are giving you.

We get comments about for example, from a man that the woman did nothing but talk about her kids and its a turnoff to the man or it can be a turnoff to the man, even if the man is a father. So just really listen to the other person, try to get a sense of what's interesting to them, what's important to them and how much they are willing to share and balance your conversation by their conversation.