Strategic Networking: 13 Tips to Become Memorable to Others
The more contacts the better? Yes and no. What good is a drawer full of business cards if people do not remember you? And a busy schedule if contacts are not well taken advantage of?
In the first #MiudaamiudaPowerSessions, Linda Pereira, businesswoman, trainer and networking specialist, explained point-to-point the strategy to become unforgettable for the best reasons. By way of summary, the tips are:
1. Work on your Google: Our time is the most valuable thing we have. Do not waste it. “We suffer more from boring and silly than from anything in life,” explains Linda Pereira. Before you go to any event, investigate the people you are going to listen to and prepare the conversation and the contact list. Choose four or five people to talk to and anticipate common themes that can form the basis for the contact. Take the sound off the phone and be memorable to people. Diversifies, knows people in all areas. It is very important that we have people extending our networks, which are multipliers.
2. Do not make excuses. The children, the mother with headaches, the husband who has to have dinner. As a rule, women, at the end of the events, go home. And that is what makes us not be remembered when we are not present. “The opportunity just dances with whoever’s on the dance floor,” recalls Linda.
3. Create Circles of Influence: If we create a network, I can pick up the phone and ask you anything. But for me to ask, I have to have invested.
4. Forget social networks for a moment: when we talk about networking we talk about relationship management, management of interpersonal relationships. Our net value is our networking. It’s the value of our network. So, work with attention and planning. The most important thing is high touch, is to be present. It is important to look for what brings us together, what unites us.
5. Use what you know: Intuition is accumulated experience that joins with emotional intelligence and creates wisdom. That’s what’s going to be needed.
6. Networking is work, it takes work. We need to implement all the strategies that we thought before and after we need to follow. Network that has results, strategic networking, gives work: it’s not walking. And, normally, it is more what is given than what we are going to receive.
7. Define what you are, your brand, and what you want to convey. Never in life will you be able to control what the world thinks of you. But you can control what you are, how you treat people, how you communicate. First, you need to know who you are and what you want to promote. It is your personal brand and it is you who decide what you want to be.
8. Define your fans and your champions. It is one thing to have people who recognize us in sympathy, others are champions, who promote us around the world. Associate people with your network: for this you have to define what your brand is, what you represent, how you present yourself to the world and why it will interest anyone.
9. Introduce people. When we are introduced by someone else to someone, we are already recommended. Networking has to be mutually advantageous and an exchange of information: to gather knowledge, to learn anything new, and always within a framework of trust. We have to inspire confidence.
10. Ignore your mother: know what they tell us “do not talk to strangers”. Ignore. And talk to as many people as possible.
11. Go early, stay late. When we arrive early there are few people. And these few people end up empathizing. When the others arrive, they are the strangers.
12. Listen twice what you say. For some reason we have two ears and one mouth. Attention to the details of the conversation, to interesting clues about how this contact can be valuable. Be generous: find anything in the other person that you can praise. There is always something more that we can say to others. Be respectful of people. Thank you for the invitation, the next day thank you for having been received. No one owes us anything. Please. Share it, tell the others to go to the next one.
13. And remember: networking is not about who you know, it’s about who knows you. Each person works to be added value, to be remembered. You need to be creative.
Go to events. Go to events. Go to events.
What if you could only change the world with your hands? In the Powerful Girls we believe that #TuPodesAssimTuQueiras. That’s why we’ve decided to help: we’ve created the #MiudaaMiudaPowerSessions, a series of small hands-on events where the aim is more than just learning new skills, to practice them.
The idea is that in two-hour sessions you can meet people, learn and put all these teachings into practice. These Small to Small Power Sessions will give you super powers: and registration is free! But attention: the number of seats is limited.
