I hate to network. Seriously. Attending networking events is a full time job and takes a bit of planning to pull it off effectively. Think about it. First you have to decide which event to attend. Then you must decide if the attendees are your target audience. Next you must decide which attendees you should network with out of 100 or so people in attendance. You introduce yourself, trying hard not to sell anything while putting your best foot forward, exchange business cards and move on to the next victim. After which you have to decide (and we all do it) yes this was a good event and I’ll attend the next one or no I will never go to another event hosted by this planner. You then take your pocket full of contacts and skip back to your office with a sense that you will surely turn one or two of these contacts into a client. The next day, you send a ”nice meeting you” e-mail to the contact with basic info on your business in case they would like to contact you. And then you wait. And wait. And wait. After say 2 weeks (because you don’t want to seem desperate) you make the dreaded follow up call to remind them about meeting you. “Would you be available to get together for coffee” you ask pensively? And upon agreeing to a one on one for coffee you carefully lay the groundwork to try and conduct business with the prospect. Finally the day of the meeting you spend an hour getting to know one another reassuring the prospect that there is a need for your services. You leave the meeting promising to follow up with the prospect over the next few days to see if you can do business. Two days later you follow up with a phone call. And then an e-mail followed up by another phone call weeks later. And another phone call. Only to never to hear from the prospect ever again. Does any of this sound familiar? If so I’m going to share some of the secrets to….
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Whenever I meet someone I ask 2 questions. What do you need and how can I help? What I’ve learned by asking these questions over the last few years is that very few people actually know how to answer them; mostly because very few people ever ask. When you meet someone new you should be thinking about the following…
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When you network with people that are only in it for themselves it can be like any other one sided relationship… frustrating and unsatisfying.
Just my opinion-Tony Wilkins
What do you need and how can I help. How asking these 2 questions can help you create more useful contacts, build your brand, generate more revenue than ever before and make you a networking superstar.
Build a community of professionals dedicated to help one another do better.