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Networking Like a Pro
Turning Contacts into Connections
Ivan Misner, Brian Hilliard
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eBook - ePub
Networking Like a Pro
Turning Contacts into Connections
Ivan Misner, Brian Hilliard
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About This Book
Grow Your Business with the Right Connections
It's easy to feel like networking is a waste of time, energy, or moneyâbut that just means you're doing it wrong. In this new edition of Networking Like a Pro, networking experts Dr. Ivan Misner and Brian Hilliard reveal key networking techniques to help you grow your business.In this comprehensive guide, you'll discover strategies that go beyond collecting business cards and turn networking into a profitable resource for your business. Dive into this book and discover how the most successful networkers leverage their brand, expertise, and customers to achieve greatness in life.You'll learn how to:
- Attract the right people with a carefully crafted Unique Selling Proposition
- Gain your most valuable customers with referrals from networking partners
- Make your best first impression with the 12 x 12 x 12 Rule
- Choose networking events and activities that best fit your needs
- Build and expand your network with a calculated follow-up strategy
- Avoid behaviors that damage your reputation and push potential partners away
Plus, gain access to worksheets, templates, and the Networking Scorecard designed to help you get the most out of your network. If you're ready to build connections that turn relationships into profitable customers, the Networking Like a Pro is for you!
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PART I
MINDSET
CHAPTER 1
Why Is Networking Not Taught in Schools?
Learning to network is largely up to each individual businessperson because this crucial skill is almost never taught in schoolâwhether that is high school, college, or graduate programs. As speakers and authors, we are troubled by this simply because networking, also what we refer to as referral marketing, is one of the most important ways for entrepreneurs to build their businesses.
A survey we conducted a few years ago with over 12,000 businesses around the world found that 91.4 percent of the respondents said networking played a role in their success. Another survey we conducted with over 1,400 business people revealed that 88 percent of respondents said that they had never had any college course that even covered the topic of networking! To clarify, this question was not about an entire course on the subject (they are almost nonexistent) but any course that simply addressed the topic.
This is unfortunate and a disservice to entrepreneurial-minded students.
Colleges and universities regularly give people bachelorâs degrees in marketing, business, and even entrepreneurship, but they teach them hardly anything about the one subject that virtually every entrepreneur says is critically important to their businessânetworking and social capital (more on social capital later).
Even more bothersome, our experience has been that universities are resistant to adding coursework on networking. Ivan once suggested to the business dean of a large university that the business curriculum should include courses in networking. His response? âMy professors would never teach that material here. Itâs all soft science.â
It shocked Ivan to hear it at a progressive major university, even though he had run into this attitude many times at many business schools. We suspect that networking is not taught in business school because most are made up of professors whoâve never owned a business.
Can you imagine a law course taught by someone who was not an attorney or an accounting course taught by anyone without direct accounting experience? Yet we put business professors in colleges to teach marketing and entrepreneurship with little or no firsthand experience in the field. Is it any wonder, then, that a subject so critically important to business people is so completely missed by business schools?
Moreover, not all business school students realize learning to network can be advantageous, so there is likely little student input on the need for this subject to be taught. Entrepreneurs make up only a portion of business school students; many of the students will work for firms where their ability to get new business is not a key part of their job responsibilities.
Business schools around the world need to wake up and start teaching this curriculum. Schools like any large institution are bureaucracies, so it is unlikely to happen quickly; however, for those schools with vision, foresight, and the ability to act swiftly (sort of the way business professors claim that âbusinessesâ should act); they will be positioning themselves as leaders in education by truly understanding and responding to the needs of todayâs businesses. These schools will be on the cutting edge of business education so as to better serve their students while positioning themselves as a leading institution for entrepreneurs.
The art and science of networking is finally being codified and structured, which gives us hope that business schools around the world will begin to incorporate it into their curriculum. A thorough bibliography of many of these articles and books can be found in the back of The Worldâs Best Known Marketing Secret (4th Edition) by Ivan Misner and Mike Macedonio (En Passant Publishing, 2012).
It is widely accepted among businesspeople that networking is a mechanism that enables their success. As more universities and colleges open their doors to professors who want to include this strategy with their marketing instruction, we are going to see a major shift in the business landscape. We will see emerging entrepreneurs who will be equipped with another strategy for success in business. We will see networking utilized at its fullest capacity, and we will see business schools actually teaching a subject that the business practitioner says is important.
Letâs return to the end of Ivanâs conversation with the dean and share how it concluded. Ivan asked him, âHow are courses on leadership any less a soft science than networking?â He didnât have an answer. The school has since replaced this dean with a new one who believes that emotional intelligence is an important thing to teach our college students. There may be hope yet!
CHAPTER 2
Networking DisconnectâFour Ways to Avoid It
Ivan was at a large networking event with more than 900 people recently. When he went up to do his presentation, he began by asking the audience: âHow many of you came here today hoping to do a little businessâmaybe make a sale?â
The overwhelming majority of the people in the audience raised their hands. He then asked, âHow many of you are here today hoping to buy something?â No one raised a handânot one single person! This is the networking disconnect.
THE GREAT DISCONNECT
The networking disconnect is the gap between a personâs desire to sell at an event and the attendeesâ desire to buy.
Think of it like owning a lemonade stand where you feel like you have the best lemonade on the block, and you want to sell it to everyone. All up and down the block there are hundreds and hundreds of other people just like you doing the exact same thing⊠selling their lemonade.
But hereâs the thing: no one is looking to buy!
The street is completely empty of potential customers. The only ones there are all the people with all their lemonade stands looking to sell more lemonade.
Thatâs the gap weâre talking about.
So if youâre going to networking events hoping to sell something, youâre dreaming. Networking is not face-to-face cold calling!
Effective networking is about developing relationships. Even if you have occasionally made a sale at a networking event, you must remember that selling at networking events is a rarity. Weâre not saying it doesnât ever happen. Weâre just saying it happens about as often as a solar eclipse. Even a blind squirrel can find a nut. Any businessperson can stumble on some business at a networking meeting from time to time. However, when you have most of the people at an event trying to sell and virtually no one there to buy, youâre crazy if you think the odds are in your favor to make a sale.
So why go? You go because networking is about long-term success rather than short-term gain. Itâs about developing relationships with other business professionals. Sometimes you go to a networking event to increase your visibility, sometimes you go to establish further credibility with people you know, and sometimes you may even go to meet a long-time referral partner and do some business and move to profitability. In any case, the true master networkers know that networking events are about moving through a process and not about closing deals.
The question then is this: How do you avoid getting into the ânetworking disconnectâ trap when attending networking events? Here are four strategies you can use to avoid that mistake.
Make It About the Relationship
Networking is not about a transaction; itâs about a relationship. It works best when youâre striving to make connections that lead to professional contacts. It doesnât work well when youâre attending a meeting just to make a sale. The root word of relationship is relate. So, relate to them by establishing a genuine connection whenever possible.
Become a Good Interviewer
When you meet people for the first time, learn how to ask questions that get them to talk about their business. Be flexible. Donât just use a script; start with some questions in mind and go with the flow. Ask them about their target market, what they like most about what they do, whatâs new in their industry, what are some of their challenges in that business, what got them in that profession, and what they like most about the business.
Build a Diverse Network of Referral Partners
Diversity is an important key to building a powerful personal network. Seek out people from diverse backgrounds. You never know who people know. One of the biggest referrals in terms of financial value that Ivan once saw came from a cosmetics consultant who referred a clientâs husband to a commercial graphic design company. The referral was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The irony was that neither the husband nor the graphic design company thought that the cosmetics consultant had the kind of contacts that would put them together. They happily discovered the error of their ways.
Follow-Up
When you meet people at networking events that you want to get to know better, set up...