Networking
Do you ever go to business networking events? Would you like to learn some tips and tricks to help you network more effectively?
We all have lots of reasons to talk to people we don’t know – waiters in restaurants, salesmen trying to sell us something, prospects that we are trying to sell something to, other attendees at a business training event of seminar, people that we meet at networking events. The list goes on and on.
Today, I’ll focus on that last one.
Do you go to network events? It might be a formal networking group such as BNI or 4N. Equally, it might be a business seminar where the organiser has built time into the schedule for open networking. Or, a training event where you have the opportunity to meet other business owners.
When you find yourself in a networking situation, try the following. As you walk up to someone to introduce yourself, tell yourself the following (not out loud!) “No idea where this conversation might take us but I am going to start by making you feel important, safe and happy.”
Try it and you will be amazed by how positive the conversations that you have are. We all want to feel that people find us interesting and that people are concerned that we feel safe and happy. So, it kind of makes sense that we try to make others feel the same.
And, once you’ve struck up some rapport, build on this by mirroring their communication style. You might want to use the same sort of words that they are using. You might want to reflect their body language. So, if they brush back their hair, you might want to do the same. If they are standing in a certain way, you might want to do likewise.
I said that this post was about networking but consider how much of it applies more broadly…
