Business Networking and Sex - Ivan Misner [56]
As a man, I prefer morning meetings because they don’t create as much of an interruption in my nine-to-five workday as other time slots do. Of course it’s easier to go to a meeting before or after work, but obstacles aside, in the end, I will do what it takes! When one realizes the enormous value gained from networking, the inconvenience of adjusting schedules to get to meetings doesn’t merit complaining.
I’d rather not stop my workday to go to a lunchtime meeting, and at the end of the day I’m tired and would prefer to go home and relax with my family, but if there is a networking opportunity that has value to me, I’ll go. Why? Because I’m the hunter! It’s my job to hunt down money and bring it home to my family. That’s my unwavering responsibility, and the more often I’m seen (visibility), the more people will remember me. The deeper my relationships become because of my tending to them, the more solid my reputation (credibility) becomes.
Please understand that I’m not denying the value or importance of advertising. On the contrary, if you’re networking and becoming well-known, an appropriately timed, strategic advertising or marketing plan can build your brand credibility with speed and strength. The key thing to remember is that people have to see you to know you exist. Your spark, integrity, and grit are what people will talk about, so you’ve got to be out shaking hands and kissing babies, as the saying goes, to show them how great you are.
She Says . . .
This statistic surprised me! Men and women were in agreement that their lunch hour was the best time slot for networking, preferring it over morning and evening. There also were larger than expected numbers of women who thought that morning and evening options were just fine. Surprise, surprise! I fully expected to find a large number of women opposed to those slots because of family obligations.
One of the most common complaints about getting to network meetings that I’ve heard from women over the course of my career as a BNI director is that they can’t get to the morning ones because they have to get their kids to school and day care. Imagine my surprise to learn that the data did not prove this to be an accurate generalization of most women. I can only assume this is an excuse used by women who don’t want to go to a meeting but have trouble saying “No.” The next question revealed that neither women nor men felt that family obligations, for the most part, get in the way of their networking activities. That really compounded my surprise.
Do women use family obligations as a way of justifying not being active or joining groups? Is it possible that they may be just wriggling sideways out of invitations to avoid confrontation? Perhaps they have a hard time making statements like, “No, I just don’t feel that this group would be a good fit for me.” Whether or not this is true and to what degree isn’t clear, but for you women who actually see scheduling as a big hurdle and feel time challenged, I have some ideas that may make it easier for you to balance business networking and family life.
• Develop systems around your networing activities that include tracking
• Choose the right type of networking activites
• Automate your network so you can spend time working your network instead of just networking
Too often we find ourselves running from one even to the next, with no real goal or plan or what we want to accomplish. Then we end up spending our time having the wrong conversations, with the wrong people at the wrong time. The above three tips will help create more balance because you will have more clear focus.