Are you into networking?
You know, making friends with strangers and exploring how or if
you can become friends or help each other in some way, especially with your business.
There are no hard and fast rules to networking but there are a few things you must avoid!
Here are a couple of examples:
To help you avoid messing up the complex brain surgery that is networking, here are a few tips:
Never start a conversation with, “What do you do?”
By all means ask this question further into the conversation rather than your opening.
It polarizes people into categorizes too quickly and can kill the conversation stone dead or
worse, it may invite the other person to start pitching to you.
It’s best to ask some general small talk questions
When you are networking, just because someone isn’t in your main target market,
doesn’t mean they don’t know people who are. By exploring what other events they go to,
where their network is strong, what kind of clients they deal with and who they have around them,
you begin to see them as someone who could open new doors for you.
Only ever use job titles when you want to soothe your ego and get nothing out of the meeting.
People are actually more interested in what you do than who you are.
It might sound grand being a consultant, lawyer or accountant, but it’s the difference that you make that counts.
Good networking isn’t rocket science but it does take a little thought!
