Be someone interesting - Networking & Credibility
Brief #4
It’s all about people
You need people. I need people. People need people! Yes, this sounds like hippy lyrics from the seventies, but it’s true.
Regardless if you work in a big corporation, small business, or as a solopreneur, at the very least you need customers. There will be other people. They may be co-workers, collaborators, teachers/professors, suppliers, mentors, employees, and contractors to list a just a handful of work-related relationships. On the personal side there are parents, spouses, significant others, children, siblings, friends, and that person who waves when you walk your dog. And then there’s the dog!
Life is filled with relationships. As business people we crave additional relationships. Especially in the form of customers. Even if you don’t work in sales directly, you need customers to keep getting that pay check. With this in mind, it matters how and when you interact with customers. More customers equal more money.
In addition to customers, people that can introduce or recommend us to them are great. Looking for that promotion with your employer? You need people that like you. People who will say nice things about you.
There’s nothing wrong with saying you want and need these things. And the relationships that go with them. Where people often sabotage themselves is what they do to gain these relationships.
Where can you turn strangers into people that remember you in a good way? So many options. There are networking events, association meetings, dinner parties, sporting events, and alumni gatherings for starters. Then there are those relationships that can significantly influence your life on a professional or personal level. Such as job interviews and dates. Or meeting future in-laws.
How do you introduce yourself? Some of you may be wondering what is the secret or hack to a great introduction? What is the recipe for that perfect introduction?
Do you go quick and dirty with only a handful of words? After typing out your own personal version of “War & Peace”, should you email that around and print it out to share hard copies? Something in between? Do you create and practice an “elevator speech” until you know it by heart and can recite it perfectly while a building burns down around you?
What do you want?
What do you want to happen when you meet strangers? Be specific. Write it down. You may have different desired outcomes depending on who you meet. Write those different desired outcomes down. Include when you want those outcomes to occur.
A couple of quick observations.
Meeting people is not enough. Some people measure their activity or “success” solely by the number of people they meet. If you get paid for the number of contacts you make, that is not the same as focusing on making quality relationships. It makes you a telemarketer.
Do you recognize forming most relationships usually take time? If not, go ahead and embrace this unfortunate fact. Denying this will only make the pain last longer.
Why should the people care about you when it comes to business? This really comes down to two things.
They need what you’re selling. You may stumble into a transactional need by someone. They need what you’re selling at that precise moment in time and space. Awesome if it happens, but believing this is the norm is a sin committed by most new salespeople and business owners. It’s nice when lighting strikes, but don’t get used to it.
They are interested in something about you, your business, and/or your product/service. If someone finds you interesting, it (usually) means that person finds you credible.
You have far more input and influence on becoming interesting than you will seeking out lighting strikes.
Be interesting
But how? Here is the one line of action you need to makes this happen.
Be an expert → Build confidence →Project credibility →Be interesting TM
Many people will see this one line and say, “Whoa! This looks like a lot of work.” It does and it is.
Don’t worry about shortcuts on how many words to use in your elevator pitch (fyi - never do one of these again. They are offensive and trite). Or how to use some language “technique”. Doing this just makes you manipulative.
Instead of focusing on the latest networking “technique” or sales hack, focus on building and sharpening your expertise and conversation skills. Mastering your topic makes you confident. Confidence makes a person credible. Credibility helps to make a person interesting. Sound familiar?
This process is easily seventy percent of the work that goes toward being a good at networking. That’s right. Being an expert matters. Then there is the communication skills part (twenty percent of the work). How can you best share your expertise with other people? You can be great at what you do, but can you express it so you’re an interesting person/professional?
For those keeping track of the math for the work required to be a good networker, you’ve noticed we’re up to ninety percent. That leaves ten percent, which is showing up. More importantly, it’s showing up for the right audience.
But….there’s always a “but”, no? Don’t I just need to know how to sell? To persuade someone to buy my product/services which I generally don’t understand to any significant degree. This perspective is why a lot of people don’t like and/or don’t trust sales people.
Do you want to work with a person that doesn’t understand what you need and only focuses on hitting their numbers for their benefit? Like Boeing, cough, cough. I mean, you wouldn’t want to do something like place an engineer in charge making jetliners instead of some finance/business “expert”. Just an interesting aside, the CEO of Airbus…he’s an engineer.
Back to being better at networking. Back to being an interesting person. While the path is simple, it takes work. Building an inventory of interesting things to say takes time. Where to start? How to do this? The 3x10 +10 framework is described in the post Learn to be an interesting communicator for building a collection of topics and being ready to use them during conversations.
Be an expert → Build confidence →Project credibility →Be interesting TM
People remember interesting people. Even if they don’t buy from you today, they might tomorrow. Or tell someone else about you in a month. Perhaps they think about you for a completely different opportunity you never imagined for yourself. But they did. Because you are interesting to that person.
Forget about your elevator pitch, or how many words to use when describing “what you do” to a stranger who is only looking for someone to become their customer. Don’t just say something interesting. Be someone interesting.