It’s time to change your perception of networking

There was a time (many say it’s still going on now) that networking was about entering a large crowded room of people you didn’t know, all dressed in stuffy business attire and your goal was to walk away with as many cards as possible, exchanging them frantically and promising to “do lunch”.

And then, you were supposed to follow up and make the sale.

I don’t know about you, but THAT sounds horrible to me! And for the life of me, I can’t even imagine how that would be successful in helping you get clients. It feels sleazy, slick and not the kind of way I want to spend an evening. Besides, it doesn’t fit my personality or my way of approaching life, and if you’re anything like me, it probably doesn’t fit the way you approach yours, either.

No wonder 1) we don’t want to do it and 2) it doesn’t seem to work for us! It’s a totally wrong approach! (Sadly, when you read or hear various networking “pros” talk about networking, some are STILL advocating this grab-as-many-cards-as-you-can mentality and telling you to push your services onto them, asking for the sale on the first meeting. Yuck!)

So, the very first thing I want you to do is to banish what you’ve already learned about marketing and start from scratch. In essence, I’m asking you to UNLEA
all the myths and allow me to show you what it’s really all about and how to approach networking so that you actually get really great results from it and feel authentically yourself the whole time.

Your Client Attraction Assignment:
Take a sheet of paper and list everything you’ve been taught about networking, what it means to you, what your emotions and feelings are around it, and what’s stopping you from doing it. The first key to changing something is to recognize it, then understand where it comes from and then, to make a commitment to changing it.