7 Networking Tips for People That Hate Networking
On our new community platform someone asked the following question:
I’m sharing my response here in the hope that it might help you avoid some of the mistakes we made.
God even the term networking I hate. More than anything I think it’s the generally sales vibe and me-me-me attitude that it conjures up. I guess our events are an antidote to that — you soon realise that it’s not difficult to meet people and build relationships when the environment and culture promotes informal conversation and authentic connections.
1) Choose your events wisely
Will there really be the types of people you want to work with there? When we started our first company I remember going to lots of networking events that looking back just weren’t the right fit for the types of people we wanted to work with (speed networking anyone?!). However, at the time it felt like something you just *had* to do.
2) Don’t work the room
Just spend time getting to know a couple of people. Lose the FOMO feeling. I’ve found that I always meet one person that made the experience worthwhile.
3) Don’t sell, kill them with kindness
At Summercamp a couple of years ago one of the speakers Kumaran Mani said in his talk:
“When you meet someone, don’t think what in it for me. But rather what’s in me for them.”
It takes time to build a reputation so just focus on being helpful and it will pay back in the long run.
4) Don’t talk, listen
As Richard Branson says “we have two ears and one mouth so use them”. Ask questions and show a genuine interest in the people you meet. People will love you if you let them speak and asking the right questions will give you valuable insights into their challenges and whether there’s an opportunity for you to help them.
5) Give people an easy first step
Maybe there’s an ebook they can download, or a free guide to better marketing you’ve created. At Spook Studio we offered a free 30 min consultancy (which actually doubled as a filter for us to see whether there was a chemistry). From there you can build trust with them.
6) Be a connector
All the best people I know at networking are truly lovely people that have an amazing ability to connect the dots and keep almost an encyclopedia of knowledge about everyone they know. They can immediately think of who you need to talk to to push your idea or business forward (and will actually follow up and intro you).
7) Be yourself
As a wise man once said ‘Be yourself, everybody else is already taken’. How you show up will be how the relationship develops. There’s no need to put a guard up, or look bigger or more established than you are, just be you. For too long when starting out with the agency we used to try and look like a big company, but that was more ego and a lack of confidence in staying small than anything. The older we got the less we cared about putting on a front, were clear about how we wanted to work and the more people liked and respected that.
I could go on for hours about my gripes with networking. I guess we hated it so much we unintentionally created our own network of people that hate networking too :)
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