This is the seventh (and final) installment of the 8 easy-to-make networking mistakes that can be avoided series.
This week I’m covering the second of two mistakes that aren’t immediately apparent, but are there just the same.
Networking in a way that didn’t work for me because I saw it work for someone else or I read that it was the way networking should be done.
This one I made a bit later on, when I started to realize that maybe I could be doing more than just showing up at networking events with an elevator speech.
I picked up a couple of well-known books about building your business through referrals (I’m purposely not sharing names here because they also contain really great information) and read all about how you should always ask for referrals, make lots of phone calls each day, and do any number of other things that I thought sounded awful, but shrugged it off as me coming up against my comfort zone (which I was, but not in a good way).
To be clear, these strategies work really well for some people. They can do it and it doesn’t feel icky to them or the people they’re talking too (most of the time).
For me? Well, for me it felt weird and pushy.
Yes, some of it was my own stuff around sales and marketing. And some of it was part of me knowing that these are good strategies to know about, but they weren’t for me.
Once I recognized that I didn’t have to network (or do business for that matter) in a way that didn’t work for me regardless of what the guru had to say, things became a bit easier (and I still expanded my comfort zone).
In closing this series I want to repeat something I wrote previously: Recognize that you’re going to make mistakes and that is OKAY.
Those mistakes are your path to success and can be expected.
Share one of your favorite networking stories in the comments below.