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Top Spying Techniques in the High Tech World of Mobile Soldiers.

1. GATHERING INTELLIGENCE

Build a file on the firm when you're intending to pitch your products or services to a new client. Stalk them--gradually. Scour the business web site. Look for national and local news stories about the firm. Identify one individual (the asset), preferably a sharp, famished someone well short of the C-suite, but whose star is really on the rise. Start with his bio dig.

You can learn more than you think from Twitter and Instagram feeds: Think post postings and food porn don't matter? Examine those, and also you learn what really matters to someone. Find out his favored eateries, novels, and magazines, and you learn his customs.

2. ASSET RECRUITING

My grandpa used to say, "Shoot one quail at a time." At networking events, do not hand out 100 business cards, just to go back to your office and send out 100 form e-mails. You're a spy. You are cleverer than that.

Instead, network like a secret agent: Use that brains you've gathered to determine how exactly to fit into that individual's tribe. Do not push it--first contact should feel natural and simple. Discuss about things that interest you both. Don't go overboard on this, but you can dress the part a bit. In other words, "We 'get' each other." That'll keep your business card from landing in the stack that is generic.

3. REFLECTING

Authentic experts in the PI (and spy) world use one technique to disastrous effect: mirroring -- the craft of subtly mimicking someone's body language or facial expressions. Frequently, we do it automatically; it's built into our neurons. It is why laughter and yawns spread, and why babies mimic their parents' grins.

Interviewers and interrogators use mirroring to set up rapport with defendants. And it can work the same for you: When you are negotiating or pitching, try echoing your strength's stance. It's a great hint you've set him at ease, if he begins to reflect yours back.

Mirroring says, "People like us do things like this." And it can work even when your strength, in many ways, is not really in your tribe.

4.

Conventional lie detection techniques are based on phone spying software observing signals of stress. To seem more fair, control your stress indexes. You might be judged as less trustworthy if you are nervous going into a cocktail hour or a meeting.

Two things you certainly can do to combat stress:

Understand your subject, and understand it wellAssume a posture of self-assurance

Dale Carnegie famously said, "Should you would like to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic." Eagerness CAn't just camouflage anxiety; it can melt away stress. As well as your energy might merely be contagious.

5. INTERROGATING SOFTLY

As a PI, I can usually coax the truth out of a grudging witness. This technique can be, as a budding business spy, pivoted by you toward filling those awkward silences at a stilted seminar cocktail hour or board meeting.

I scan the room for somebody who piques my interest. Maybe she's the geeked-out one wearing an X Files T-shirt under her blazer. Pick one individual and make it your mission to discover something really interesting about them.

STORYLINES LEAD TO REAL DIALOG. REAL CONVERSATION LEADS TO CONNECTION.

A good interviewer understands the art of asking great questions. Instead of the old standards, like "What do you do?" try asking something surprising, like: "Tell me why you love your work." A story will be told by her answers, although it might take your interviewee by surprise. Narratives lead to real dialogue. Actual conversation results in link.

BE HONEST

None of this works if used merely as a tactic. You may come across as insincere in case you don't take a real personal interest in your "goal." At the close of the day, making a real link that is human is worth more than just acquiring a fresh client. And when you can accomplish both, well...you're a suitable operative.