What industry are you in that this is common, or even accepted? Nowhere I've worked would have answered yes to a site visit by a random salesperson.
Just start talking to people... or to the parent's point: Listen to people (and follow up!). You're looking to build relationships, not marks (I hope).
Its true what the op says that there are people that naturally want to share and mentor what they do. Now that you can easily find them or that there are signs of it you can find as a stranger..
Im running a b2b business, and even though i have personal contacts in the area, im frequently stonewalled to even start a basic conversation, let alone a product sales one.
Im honestly asking, i do b2b, please tell me some secrets :)
Doesn't matter that I now have a known brand behind me. Customers want the same essential thing: That you care about their success. I still answer my cell in the middle of the night during an outage because clients want to know i care and feel their pain because my company is impacting their ability to be successful, to pay employees, to pay bills, to feed their families.
The point is the same throughout and hits at my philosophy. I don't sell servers or hosting or support. We sell good days. We sell a developer wowing his or her boss. We sell an absence of worry that a client will be pulled away from time with their family to solve a web issue. We don't sell RAM and processors. We sell good days.
This is all spot on. The beauty of it is the real friends you make and what it is all worth.
There are calls I answered at O'dark thirty 10 years ago that are HUGE today.
People starting careers, people I helped to get there. They remember, and when I need or ask, they return consideration I gave them.
Or, I walk into a booming department, shake hands with the person building it, and we go have a lunch to chat about the early days.. They share all they are doing, and it's awesome.
When people know you know it makes sense to get there more than just do a deal, everyone values that.
I was an account manager intern at a VAR in college and was really shocked to discover this. I sold about $50k of training to a big company based on a cold call. One time a guy called looking for advice on sharing files on NT4 and ended up in a conversation about licensing -- I sold him an EA. Another time I was in a wingman role for a site visit with an account exec. On the way back, we stopped at a really large company, the account exec bullshitted his way in, and we ended up chatting with their local IT director for about an hour. We started getting RFPs a few weeks later.
There's no secret. Just treat people well, talk to them and find out what problems they have. If you can't solve them, refer them to someone who can.
Think of it this way... It can be an excuse to make a pitch, which sucks. Everyone knows the charm was just a ruse.
Or, if your team has a genuine interest in the field, that charm isn't a ruse. It's genuine and earnest interest. It's the piece that can get the real convo started.
The difference is, after a time and maybe some business done, whether real understanding and a shared, common interest in success exists.
Where it does, everyone will have improved and that network of people has value. Becomes a center of gravity, attracting others.
Where it does not, it's just a deal, and maybe it was worth it, maybe not. But nobody is invested on a personal level. There is no real understanding.
With the former, it's common to check in, exchange news, share success, failure, introduce new people, etc...
With the latter, it's extremely common to only talk when needed, as it's just noise otherwise.
Truth is, for a given niche, there are always interesting people who care about it. You want to be and cone to know those people because they are where all the real action is.
Circle back to the bullshit way in.
Having the goal I put here means that conversation is extremely likely to have enough value to warrant the effort needed to start it.
He charmed his way past the various gatekeepers and got to the guy he was looking for. There was nothing deceitful about it.
Engineering software, process, tools.
Stopping by to learn about a company, share experiences, maybe buy a lunch isn't a bad thing.
It is regional. There are parts of the nation very hostile to this. They don't even have receptionists.
For those parts, working social media, holding events, making calls works to get that appointment.
In all cases, general networking is needed. Give and get.
Actually, thinking about it most of the reputation we had was in speaking to smaller owner-operated businesses where the owner or self-employed associates were free to speak to us and could gauge the benefit to themselves from doing so (our interviews were often on behalf of larger companies testing the market for product ideas, so they would get the satisfaction of providing feedback and even getting advance notice of what may be on offer)
anyway, what I'm saying is.. it can be difficult and time consuming to arrange that but it is possible to get somebody else to do the drudge work.