the connection game

Last week an entrepreneur from Minneapolis told me that she got very little out of a recent networking event she attended.

She sat down with a group of five people and lamented the fact that there weren’t more people there. She was looking for a much larger group to make more connections in the little time she had. That way, she explained, the meeting would have been more fruitful for her.

Her words struck me.

Like most folks in business, she rushes around from event to event in an effort to find clients. The more meetings she attends, the more she can convince herself that she put the “work” in “networking” – even if she doesn’t see results.

After running a networking organization for 13 years, attending other organizations’ events, and being a person in the world, I’ve noticed that business owners maintain a variety of bizarre assumptions about what it is to know a fellow business person.

Let's set expectations straight about networking, shall we?

1. There's no way to make networking efficient. You’ll never see results (new connections, new customers, new hires) if you expect that they come from one or two meetings, no matter how many people attend them.

2. Relationships take time. If you size folks up in a few meetings, you’re wasting your time. If you judge a person based on her business card, you’ll be out of luck. When you have a choice between meeting allllllllll the people at an event or choosing the three people that interest you most, choose the latter. Focus on them.

3. Listening for the one thing that connects you to the other person will get you farther than 999 business cards ever could. Be present. Tune in. People relate to you because you’re relatable, not because your LinkedIn resume establishes that you’re the expert at <insert impressive accomplishments here.>

You’ll have the most success when you attend events consistently, confidently, and with a follow-up attitude.

Be gracious, not pushy.

Be patient, not rushed.

Fun fact: the most prolific networkers I know benefit more from the smaller meetings than the larger ones.

See you soon,

jill