Networking Tips

Hello again

I make no apology for returning to the topic of networking, but I do apologise for extolling the virtues of networking without offering, up to now, much advice on how to go about it.

So, apology duly made, here are a few tips to make your networking easier and more productive. That's for you and for all the unlucky people you've hitherto pinned in their seats or trapped in a corner without due cause or reward.

Well, maybe you haven't, but here's the tips anyway:

1. Know what you're there for. It's fun but it's also business. If you're trying to achieve nothing in particular then that's about all you'll achieve. Which is a waste of time and probably money.
2. Know what you have to offer, and be open-minded about it. Make a mental list of your skills, talents and interests and try to be imaginative about how you might help other people.
3. Know who else is there - find out in advance, if possible. By the 'who else' I mean the people you've been admiring, hoping to meet (should be the same) or hoping to avoid, and take the appropriate action.
4. When you meet your 'hero', 'heroine' or useful contact, don't ask them for a favour (or a loan). Rather, be friendly, interested in them and what they're up to, get chatting and ask - and this is the critical bit - 'What can I do to help you in that?' or just 'What do you need to help you accomplish that?' After all, you may know someone else who can help them, even if you can't.

Networking is about giving, as much as or more than it is about receiving - at least directly. So be useful, helpful, friendly and open. What goes around truly does come around. To quote the BNI's ugly but true motto, 'Givers gain'.

Roy Everitt, Writing For Results

PS Watch this space, or better still, subscribe to this blog, for exciting news about the best, most exciting and (if I have anything to do with it) most fun networking, masterminding* opportunity the Internet has yet seen.

PPS *'Networking' may or may not be a word (see previous posts), but 'masterminding' surely is, if not quite in this context...