Business Networking and Sex - Ivan Misner [53]
Every time I start to think this is an almost universal feeling of distaste for that approach to networking, I am brought back to reality by the minority of people who still think that this is actually a good networking technique.
To my astonishment, a man on the forum actually wrote:
I don’t happen to believe that you need a relationship with the person you are asking first. What you must have is a compelling story or product/service that would genuinely benefit the referral. The fact that you had not cultivated a relationship with the person has become irrelevant because, more importantly, you had been in a position to help [your contact] benefit from the introduction. If it’s of genuine benefit to the person being referred Idon’t see the problem.
It’s about the benefit of what’s being referred rather than the relationship with the person asking for the referral.
Who am I to deny my contacts something good?
Wow. What can I say? The “relationship” is irrelevant! All you have to have is a good story, product, or service and I owe it to you or any stranger (who says he or she has a good product) to introduce him or her to a good contact of mine! Really? People really think this way!? According to this writer, it doesn’t matter if I actually know or trust the person wanting the business. As long as the person has a good product (or so he says), I should refer that person because I would otherwise “deny” my contacts “something good”!
Networking is not about hunting. It is about farming. It’s about cultivating relationships. Don’t engage in “premature solicitation. ”You’ll be a better networker ifyou remember that.
She Says . . .
Of course the relationship is the most important thing. We have been saying that since the days of planned marriages between kingdoms. “But Mom, I really want to love the man I marry. I don’t want it to be a business merger.” It is always about the relationship first, but it cannot be only about the relationship. We have to strike that happy balance, creating a relationship that we can turn to and ask for business referrals or connections. When we are in a good relationship with our network members, they are more than happy to make the connections for us.
CHAPTER 4
Gender-Specific Networking Obstacles
The Survey Says . . .
Best Time to Network
Having run the world’s largest networking organization for many years, I occasionally hear people express concern about family obligations interfering with their ability to attend business meetings. I went into this survey expecting to see a dramatic difference between men and women on this issue. What I saw surprised me.
Many women told me that attending networking meetings in the morning was very hard for them. This is understandable, because even though our society is more gender-equal than in the past, a large number of women have told me that the lion’s share of household operation, organizing family events, and taking kids to school are still handled by women. Yet in our survey results, the difference between men and women turned out to be very small; only a few more women (9.3 percent) than men (8.4 percent) expressed difficulty with morning meetings. Almost 22 percent of men, compared with about 19 percent of women, said that it was always easier to attend networking functions in the morning. Although the women in our survey found morning meetings to be less convenient, it was not by a large factor.
This may be another example of the exception becoming the perception—the perception in this case being my own. The women who emotionally vented their dissatisfaction with morning meetings seemed like a larger group than they actually were. This poses the question of to what degree