Remember the Golden
Rule of Networking?
| All things
being equal, people will do business with,
and refer business to, those people they know,
like and trust. |
|
When we give to someone, we take
an important step toward eliciting those “know,
like and trust” feelings toward us. When someone
knows you care about them enough to refer business
their way, they feel good about you.
Actually, they feel great
about you, which produces the natural desire to give back
to you. They also know that it’s in their best interests
to cultivate a win/win relationship with you.
Of course, it doesn’t
have to be actual business that you give.
It could be information
that would help them in their business, personal, social
or recreational lives, or any other area of interest to
them. Perhaps you suggested a book (or sent them a copy)
you knew would be of value to them. Maybe you heard their
son or daughter was looking for work at a certain company
and, knowing someone there who knew the personnel director,
you made a call and put in the kind word that helped ensure
employment.
What’s important
to remember is to give, not with an emotional demand
that the person to whom you’re giving must repay
you in kind, but purely out of the joy of adding increase
to the life of another human being.
This is the grand paradox
of giving and receiving:
| When you
give purely out of the love of giving, you
cannot help but receive. Yet when you give
only in order to receive, it doesn’t
work out nearly as well! |
|
One reason is that people are attuned
to your intent; it’s human nature. When you give
only in order to get, it comes across as such. More
often than not, they can tell. Some people have a knack
for getting away with this more than others, but eventually
it will come back to haunt them.
When you give because
it’s something you desire to do, and do so without
the expectation of direct reciprocation, you’ll find
that the Law of Cause and Effect works for you in ways
the typical business person might never even imagine.
Thomas Power, founder
of the online network, Ecademy, and author of Networking
For Life, puts it very nicely: “The energy…arises
from a willing suspension of self-interest.”
That sentence perfectly
encapsulates the one trait common to those I call “superstar
networkers.” These are people who constantly ask
themselves how they can add to the life and business
of the other person, as opposed to what they can get
from them.
Please understand,
this does not mean they don’t expect to prosper.
In fact, they know they’ll prosper, and in a huge
way. But they are not emotionally attached to having
to reap the rewards right then and there, or even ever,
directly from that person. Thus, they can fully focus
on the giving part of being a successful networker. They
know that the more they give, the more they’ll
eventually get. Yes, it really does work that way.
Let’s take a
closer look at what I mean by superstar networkers.
Superstar Networkers Superstar
networkers, those whose businesses are extremely profitable
and whose personal lives are filled with friends and loving
relationships, share two powerful traits in common:
Number one, they are givers.
Number two, they are “connectors.”
First let’s discuss
what I don’t mean by givers. There are those who
seem to be givers, but their methodology is so sharply
limiting that it doesn’t fulfill the qualities of
giving we’ve been discussing —nor does it produce
the same results. Example:
The Quid Pro Quo Networker
This is the person
who gives only in order to get something back. (Or, as
the esteemed Dr. Hannibal Lecter put it so eloquently, “Quid
pro quo, Clarice…quid pro quo.” ) This type
of pseudo-networker always has an agenda and soon gains
a reputation for such.
While a QPQ networker can and
sometimes does attain his share of business, he will never
develop the kind of long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships
with others that the superstar networker will enjoy. He will
never elicit in others those feelings of knowing, liking
and trusting that is the hallmark of the genuine networker’s
relationships. If he does get anything back from the relationship,
it will at most be exactly what he gave in the first place
and no more—and most likely, it will come grudgingly.
What’s more, it most likely will come back from that
one source alone, and only that one time. Any success this
person achieves will be mere inches on the yardstick of profitable,
superstar networking.
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