i am sure you have heard the word.
i am sure you have been told by someone that you need to do some of it.
if you listen to your mentors, bosses or any guru, they may tell you that your network equals your networth.
they will tell you that you need a large network in order to get ahead in this game.
they are right.
after listening to the pros, you head out to the next seminar armed to the teeth with business cards. you take your brand new, shiny cards with the intention of giving out as many as you can to whomever will take them. because they listened to you for the whole night, somebody has to call you, they need your product/service right?........
wrong.
why? you sit by the phone and wait, wait, wait.........and nobody calls.............
at the next do, you do the same. except this time you ask for as many cards as you can get your hands on. this way you can call them......better, right?...........
wrong.
you have a boxful of cards sitting on your desk and you cannot remember who half the people are on those little pieces of cardboard, or what they said.
but you think, "hey! i thought networking was getting in touch with people of like mind? everyone there was attending this 'networking' seminar to get in touch with as many other people as they could, right? aren't we supposed to be building our networks to be bigger?
maybe,
but, maybe what you think is 'networking', is not what it is supposed to be.
networking is getting out there and connecting with people. real connecting is getting face to face, building honest, true, reciprocal relationships with people.
you see, 99% of people do not get out there and meet strangers. strangers are odd and scary.
and well, 99% of individuals are looking for someone who will help them with, whatever predicament they are in. this is why they are all at the seminar, because they can't get it right and they need help.
humans are built to live and operate in tribes or packs of about 150. (the number 150 is where we operate the most efficiently) after 150 the intimacy breaks down and chaos begins to erupt.
wikipedia:
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it is called dunbar's number:
Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.[1] Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.
Dunbar's number was first proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who theorized that "this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size ... the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained." On the periphery, the number also includes past colleagues such as high school friends with whom a person would want to reacquaint themselves if they met again.[2]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------because we now live in big cities od thousands or millions, we lose the small intimate ties that help us create real relationships with others.
your networking skills are just going out and making one real connection with a person with the intention of helping them in some way. in reality your are building relationships with strangers.
all of us have something uniqely ours. some special skill or piece of knowledge that someone else needs. why do you think all these people attend seminars? they are looking for someone to help them with something.
just think, if you are the only person in the room that is there to help someone else, whay an advantage you have?
if everyone is there to seek help, and you are the one to help them out......... 1+1=2
go to your next networking seminar and make the effort to connect with ONE person. listen to what they need. write it down if you need to. and KEEP them in touch with them. send them an email the NEXT day. actively help them out with whatever you two talked about.
just think, you listened to someone. you kept in touch with them. you delivered on your promise to help.
isn't this what everyone is looking for? someone who does what hey say?
after doing this, you will have created a fan. this is someone who talk oabout you for free, ALL the time.
and just think if you had a database of 'fans' to take with you, wherever you go.
this becomes your network
this is how you build your networth.
read: Your Million Dollar Network by July Ono.
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