Supercharge Your Networking

I believe that Collaboration will be a growing theme in the coming few years. Why? Because the pace of technological and societal change is increasing so fast that no one person can possibly keep up. Therefore your message, your project, and your business will depend on several people to put it together and deliver it.

This means that building your network of contacts is critically important.

And the real key is that you want to build your network before you need it!

There are many ways to build your network, and I will cover some of the others in a future issue, but today I want to focus on the good old in-person, physical networking event.

If you cringed a little as I said that, then don’t worry; this message is for you!

Let’s face it, even the most gregarious of us have times when we feel like the last thing we want to do is to go into a room with a hundred other people, plaster a smile on our faces and mouth meaningless platitudes for a couple of hours. Particularly when we come away with nothing from the event. It is disheartening and time-wasting.

BUT! It doesn’t have to be that way. I am going to show you here how you can make the whole event far more productive and even enjoyable. The first way is the supercharged method that canoften be used, but unfortunately not always. The second way is what you can always use. And I promise you that if you take these techniques on board, practice and use them, it will transform the results and your experience of networking.

Pamela’s Story

Pamela Storey ?was nominated as a speaker for TEDxRuakura in 2016. She was nominated by her board, on which she sat for a non-profit called Kaivolution. At that time, Pamela was not a confident speaker, but was willing to put herself out there, take action, and, more importantly, take direction.

Kaivolution is a local food rescue service. Kai means food in the Maori language. Prior to her TEDx talk, Pamela would go to networking events all the time, looking for businesses to sponsor or donate to Kaivolution. She found these events exhausting, as person after person would say hello, and she would spend 10 minutes explaining what food rescue is and why it is important.

After a dozen or so people, even Pamela’s enthusiasm would be waning, and she would have less and less impact on each person she spoke to at the event.

I worked with Pamela on her TEDx talk for around 3 months. Honing the message and the emotion that brings the message to life. We worked on the wording and pacing that works for Pamela, and in the end, she gave a cracker of a talk. (You can watch it?here).

I was happy with that. My job was done, Pamela (possibly the weakest speaker of ten that year) had done well, and the whole event was successful on every level.

Transformation

But for Pamela, this was just the start. Her TEDx talk was just shy of 15 minutes. From it she created a 2-minute teaser, a 5-minute talk and a 10-minute talk, and of course, she could give the 15-minute talk at the drop of a hat.

Going to future networking events, she requested the chance to speak to the group. By leveraging her TEDx talk, it wasn’t hard for her to get agreement to this. In the end, Pamela told me that if she wasn’t able to speak from the front of the room, she wouldn’t bother attending the events because it just wasn’t worth the energy.

Why?

Because her networking was transformed. By getting on stage and addressing the group, she only needed to explain food rescue, Kaivolution, the work they do and the reasons why only once. Speaking on stage, she had permission, even the expectation, to explain with a?passion?that might be off-putting one-on-one.

After speaking from the stage, when she was networking, people were approaching her non-stop. They may not have known anyone at the event, but because they had seen and heard her speak with passion from the stage, they felt like they knew her.

And the questions they asked were much more specific about what they might be able to do to help the organisation meet its goals and mission.

For Pamela, this sort of networking became energising as well as productive. Not only did she avoid repeating the same message all night, but her passion and vision were reflected back in the comments and queries from the group. No wonder she decided not to attend networking events where she couldn’t speak.

To me, that is the ultimate way to supercharge your in-person networking. Of course, you can’t always manage the opportunity to speak before such an event. Sometimes you can get a similar result by organising to share a video with the participants before they attend. Not everyone will see it, and it needs to be an engaging video, but done well, this can have some impact.

My Networking Philosophy

When you can’t speak from the stage, or when you are at a more impromptu networking opportunity, what do you do?

The first rule is?Don’t be boring!

And the way to avoid this is to think about and practice what you will say and how you will say it before you are in the situation.

What do you do?

Let’s start with the convoluted etiquette of networking. The standard question that is asked when you start talking to someone is,?“What do you do?”

I am convinced that 99% of the time, this is not really the question they are asking. They don’t really care what you do, and if you tell them what you do, it will bore them. What they are really asking is,?“Who are you?”?They want to know a bit about who you are.

Remember a time when out of politeness, you asked someone something like?“What do you do?”?and they launched into a ten-minute detailed monologue detailing the specifics of their boring job. And you are standing there with a frozen look on your face, glass in hand, thinking,?“Kill me now”?and hoping someone will come along to rescue you.?-Don’t be that guy!

If they went around saying,?“Who are you?”?it would come across as odd if not downright rude, so they ask,?“What do you do?”

So this is the first key:

In your mind, remember:?

Don’t be boring?and

“What do you do?” = “Who are you?”

Avoid Boring People

The key to not boring people is offering?potato chips.

Metaphorically speaking.?Dean Jackson, a legendary marketer, tells the story of trying to get a squirrel to eat out of his hand. The way to do it is to leave a trail of potato chips from the tree to the bench you are sitting on. The squirrel will timidly, suspiciously approach the potato chip furthest from you and eat it. Watching you carefully the whole time.

Then it will approach the next chip, and so on until it is finally comfortable enough with your presence that it will happily eat a potato chip placed on your palm. However, the point is that if you initially approached the squirrel with a potato chip on your palm, it would have run up the tree as quick as a flash.

The translation of this into networking is to avoid drowning the person in front of you with information. Rather you want to give a little information and include a potato chip, a piece of incomplete information that, if they find interesting, they will ask about. And so you answer that query and include another potato chip. This continues until the interest is high enough that you suggest catching up for a coffee in a better setting to really discuss possibilities.

Keep this potato chip philosophy in mind.

Your Network Opening Conversation

Following these principles, you want to develop what I call your?Network Opening Conversation. Which comprises two pieces that get you started in conversation with strangers at a networking event.

Step 1: Answering “What do you do?”

As stated, you really want to answer with something that says who you are but is couched in a way that leads to what you do. This immediately raises the question of how you describe who you are. Because our default is to use what we are to describe who we are. I am a father, I am a carpenter, I play golf etc.

The idea is to think about your values, about your defining characteristics. Think about what you love to do and what really gets you energised, and consider why that jazzes you. Then figure out how you can use that in an answer.

Using that in an answer, you then link who you are with what you do at the end.

So for me, my answer might be:

“You know, ever since I was young, I got more energised by helping other people reach success than by achieving something myself.

My martial arts fighting career spanned a decade, but I got more pleasure from the people I coached winning than I did from the times I won myself.

I guess that is why I now coach speakers and founders with their talks, pitches and presentations.”

That is more interesting than me just talking about coaching speakers and founders because now you know something about me you didn’t know a moment ago, and the first strand of a relationship has been cast. It also gives them a number of areas that they can pursue. If they are not interested in what I do for speakers and business owners, they can ask about martial arts, and the conversation moves along.

Now if the person asked,?“What do you do?”?just because they were bored and felt it was necessary to say something and doesn’t really care, they will probably reply.?“Oh, that’s interesting.”?And you know that there is no point in continuing. You could ask them a question or shift the conversation to someone else in the group.

However, if someone asks for more information, then we are getting somewhere.

Step 2: What You Do

Having given them some insight into what makes you tick, and referenced your work, the next piece of information, when prompted, will be to say something about what you do. But it is important that you do this from the perspective of the transformation that you offer your clients. And it is critical that you engage emotion when you do this.

Have You Ever Script

I used to teach this script. Actually, it is a framework all the time, but I have adapted my approach since I realised,?“What do you do?”?=?“Who are you?”

The framework goes like this:

1. Describe the problem you solve from the perspective of the client, engaging emotion.
2. In the simplest terms, describe what you offer or do
3. Describe the ideal outcome from the perspective of the client, again engaging emotion.

For me, this might look like:

“Have you ever had the opportunity to share an idea that you are really passionate about, but when you got on stage in front of people, the words that came out didn’t do your idea justice, people didn’t get it or simply didn’t care, and you left the stage feeling defeated, deflated and embarrassed?

Well, I help people to craft the message that you share from the stage to be engaging and compelling, so when you get off the stage people are approaching you to find out more, to get involved or take action on the idea you shared.”

A major part of this framework, and of all spoken communication, is the emotional see-saw. As humans, contrast is an important part of engagement. We notice the contrast, so you need to build this into your message and your stories.

In this case, we are using the emotional see-saw for contrast. That is, we start with one state of emotion,?defeated, deflated and embarrassed,?and we move to a different state,?engaged, active and energised. Notice I didn’t describe that second set of emotions, rather, I display them in how I deliver the outcome.

The pivot point of the emotional see-saw is the service or transformation that you offer your client.

Once you have delivered your transformation piece, you should go on to answer questions asked in simple, brief and general terms. Always leaving?the potato chip of mystery?to allow the other person to ask some more questions. Eventually, when the questions become too detailed or specific, it is the perfect time to suggest getting together for deeper conversation in a less boisterous environment. i.e. Let’s catch up for coffee and continue this conversation later. -Put a date in your calendar there and then!

Gee, this sounds like a lot

It does take a bit of work to develop your?“who I am”?and?“the transformation I offer”?answers, and once you’ve developed them, you need to practice them so that they come out naturally, fluidly and effectively.

But this is well worth the effort. Once you have this down, you could use it almost every day of your business life. And if it is effective even 25% of the time, it could totally transform your experience of business.

The return on investment is ridiculously high.

I have been toying with the idea of running a workshop to develop this network opening. If you see some value in that and think you would appreciate assistance in putting together your Network Opening Conversation, please leave a comment and let me know.

This article was originally published in issue#009 of The Compelling Communicator Newsletter, delivered free by email every week click the image below to subscribe.