Pulling the Net in your Network
Everybody’s had a change point– that pivotal point in your life when life, as you’ve known it, changes forever. Here’s mine:
When I was 12, my family and I, on our way back from dinner, pulled onto our street to find it flooded with the flash of sirens and smoke– our home, the only home I’d ever known, engulfed in flames.
They say the fire started from a short-circuit in the floodlamp we’d been using to keep our dog’s newly-born puppies warm. They all died.
December 7, 1997. Two and a half weeks before Christmas.
What I’ve just done, by relaying the most personally affective moment in my life, is Pull you into my reality. At Juice, everything we do is centered around an operating system that we call Pull Conversation– an orientation that pull’s a person into your reality, and vice versa. The result: trust, respect, collaboration, passion, flow, purpose… being able to use Pull is what separates an energetic conversation from a drab one.
As Bill Bacharach says in Values Based Selling “People don’t trust you because they understand you, they trust you because you understand them!”
How many times have you met someone for the first time and felt that spark, that raw energy that commands your attention? Research indicates that only about 1/3 of us are naturally Pull oriented.
And it’s amazing how well this has worked in my networking strategy. Being able to forge trusting relationships quickly is key to the professional communicators growth. Think of your network as a library: how many floors do you have access to?
Here are a few Pull strategies that I’ve found fruitful in a networking setting:
- Listen! Don’t blankly stare with your eyes glazed over. Link what they are speaking about to the next words out of your mouth. Your networking conversation is like a collaborative mind map.
- Face to Face, it should be as if the person/people you are speaking to are the only ones in the room. Nothing will snap your net faster than eyes wandering to the clock, your Blackberry or that cutie in the corner (You can make them the object of your next networking endeavour!)
- Be natural. One thing I love about the social media space is that it’s alot like the real world. These are real people, so speak to them like one. There’s nothing worse than speaking to someone who sounds like they’re reading from a cue card.
I’m a firm believer that great conversation breeds a tangible energy. Have you ever walked into a room and spotted that one person who just has it? It’s as if their conversation is magnetic, you’re drawn to it; PULLED to it. This is the net, and soon enough the entire room will be trapped in it.
Try casting your net at the next networking event and harvest the trust and respect that’s sure to build meaningful business relationships.
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