In our family we read three newspapers on Sunday, just to get the range politically yoiu know. We read, and in no particular order. The Sunday Telegraph The Independent on Sunday and The Observer: It was in The Observer I saw a great headline “Addicted to Alliums”. And I thought about those I know who are addicted to Networking.
Those of you who go networking must have seen or know a serial networker.
They are known in the locality and some are good some almost invisible and some just bad. So what does make a good networker?
In assessing that we need to understand what not to do.
There are several misunderstandings about networking, thankfully it has moved on from an article I read about 7 years ago. The piece went something like this (forgive me not remembering exactly the article) but in essence it was:
Networkers are people who go to an event and don’t leave until they have pitched everyone in the room. In short they were salesmen who won’t take no for an answer.
Two years ago when I was a member of a group in Surrey, a woman visited who was selling a technological marketing tool. She visited twice in one month and contacted everybody in the room. Over the next 4 weeks she tried to get an appointment with us all. Her objective was to sell and not to network. Unsurprisingly she failed to sell and we as a group decided she was not the sort of person we wanted to network with.
Networking is about telling or informing, NOT about selling.
Telling not Selling is the mantra.
If you inform you will sell but not immediately, the referrals and sales will come but trust needs to be established first.
If you are addicted to Networking go for it, but respect your fellow networkers and put effort into building trust with fellow networkers.
Paul
and remember to put the work into network
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