Career Cube Blog

I subscribe to a few other email newsletters. One I look forward to receiving is “Improvised Musings” by Avish Parashar. Ironically his article last week was also about networking. I’m traveling to Atlanta this week to speak at the Southeastern Association Colleges and Employer’s conference and thought this would be of interest (and give me a little break.)

Unfortunately, it seems like many people in the world have no idea what “networking” is. They seem to believe that networking is about getting as much as possible from other people as quickly as possible.

In the recent past, I have had experience with both the good and bad side of networking. I want to quickly share the guidelines I keep in mind so that you can apply them to your own situation. Though my examples are mostly professional, these are basically communication principles which can be applied personally or professionally. This is not a comprehensive list, but rather a few good ideas that I have come across.

Also, some of this advice goes against what you may read in a sales or networking book, and you may disagree. That’s fine. I just find that sometimes the sales and networking experts tend to be people that enjoy this stuff, and so the things they tell you to do (and that work for them) don’t work well for those of us without a sales disposition. Think of this list as networking for people who don’t love sales and networking!”

-Relationships First, Info Second One of the biggest turn-offs at a networking event or association meeting is when someone walks up to you and immediately starts pumping you for information. “Where do you get your clients? How do you charge? How much business do you do a month?” The list goes on…On the one hand, I understand where the questions come from. People who are new or uncertain get very excited by someone with some experience and feel that this is their chance to have all their questions answered. For this reason, I do my best to answer as many of these questions as possible. On the other hand, I have never developed a relationship with any of these “info-pumpers.” When someone just tries to get information out of me, it immediately creates a sense that they don’t care about me as a person. I give them info, and then move on. This is unfortunate for them, because the real power of relationships comes after the relationship has become long and deep.

-Ditch the Elevator Speech This one is simple in concept, but hard in implementation. Be who you are. People can smell a fake a mile away. I also think most people should throw away their elevator speech (an elevator speech is a clever 30 second pitch about who you are and what you do). Whenever I ask someone what they do and they bust out their elevator speech, my “fake-meter” goes off. Not because I think they are lying, but rather once someone starts reciting a pre-memorized script, they are no longer in the moment and no longer being real.
I realize this goes against the advice of almost every networking and sales book out there, but I stand by it. I have never felt comfortable delivering an elevator speech, and every time I hear one I feel distanced from the other person. When someone delivers an elevator speech, they are basically saying, “this is what I am selling.” That goes against the first rule of building relationships first.

-Be Real Be who you are. Too many people act fake and try to connect with everyone they come in contact with. You will not like everyone you come in contact with. It’s ok to let them go. You don’t have to be rude (in fact you shouldn’t), but don’t exert a ton of effort maintaining those contacts. To me, that’s being fake. If someone I don’t “click” with keeps trying to meet me for lunch or whatever, I think, “this person doesn’t really want to meet me, they just want to stay in touch for potential business.”
You will be better off cultivating a few good, deep relationships than many shallow ones. The people I tend to meet up with are people I enjoy meeting and talking with anyway. Here’s a guage: If you met up with or talked to this person and you didn’t talk at all about business, would you enjoy yourself? If the answer is no, you may want to reconsider what you are doing.

- Melanie Szlucha

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