Networking (either at events, face-to-face, or online) is all about building relationships.

It’s not about ‘selling!’

It’s simply about everyday communication. About joining in with the conversation.

Every sustainable relationship is generally built on three key stepping stones

1. Know
2. Like – to varying degrees
3. Trust - to varying degrees

Using LinkedIn to best effect, can be an effective and efficient communication channel for these 3 stages.

Whilst there is still NO SUBSTITUTE for building relationships face-to-face, you can initiate and grow exciting new relationships, online.

Once you’ve met and engaged with others, in groups, and having decided there is mutual rapport and opportunity, you can set a time to meet (even if it’s only by video-conferencing on such platforms at Skype)

Once a face-to-face meeting has taken place, you can use LinkedIn and other social media platforms to continue to build and reinforce relationships; and even reinvigorate older or faded relationships –it’s a great tool for customer retention.

So let me share what I believe are 4 key reasons to engage

1. Raise your profile

• Connect with new people and those already in your client data base
• Have an outstanding personal summary in your profile
• Share ‘status updates’ with your network, regularly
• Join groups
• Comment on and be supportive of other peoples’ activities

2. Get others to know what you do

• Have a fully completed, interesting and welloptimised profile (with ‘apps’)
• Join groups
• Partake in discussions
• Give away free advice
• Ask and answer questions

3. Meet key people and decision makers

• Ask for introductions
• Build your Level 1 contacts. The more Level 1’s you have the more level 2’s you’ll be able to access.
• Ask your network to send your profile to their network – ask for referrals
• Write directly to fellow members of groups to proactively initiate relationships
• Write directly through InMails (premium accounts only) to start relationships
• Follow companies to find key people

4. Help others with their business challenges

• Introduce your level 1’s to each other where you know people who can help or who would be good introductions
• Share your experiences
• Offer advice and guidance where relevant.

Networking across the social media and on LinkedIn can help you with these simple but important activities.

Are you engaged yet?

Or are you still waiting to see if LinkedIn is here to stay?

Don’t get left behind!

In my opinion, our future is dependent on what we do as a result of our knowledge, expertise and experience

Things have changed dramatically in the world of work!

Twenty or thirty years ago, when you took a ‘job’, you generally considered it to be a long term commitment. Today, however, a ‘job for life’ , whether you work for a small family-owned business or a multi-national company, is improbable.

Long-term job-security, today, is rare. Despite the commonly heard statement ‘our staff our most important asset’ we see that almost everyone becomes expendable when things get tough.
In today’s competitive markets, the power of the numbers, reflected in the P&L, supersedes job-security.

The employment model itself is changing from an ‘employed‘ model to a ‘supplier‘ model. Large brands are shedding significant numbers from their permanent staff and contracting expertise and services ‘on-demand‘. By and large, many have become a sort of supplier of services rather than ordinary employees.

But what has this got to do with social media in general and LinkedIn in particular?

By creating your own personal profile, online, you are creating a brand in your own right. What you upload to You Tube, what you write in your LinkedIn or your Facebook profile, showcases the sort of person you are, both to prospects and also to people you’ve never met.

It ‘s a double edged sword, as you never know what might pop up when people Google your name.
This, of course, can be good, bad and even ugly when those raucous and potentially inappropriate pictures of that crazy Hen Night or Stag Night are posted online!

Part of ‘Brand You’, in the future, will be measured by the size of your network, reflected by your ‘friends’ on Facebook and/or your professional connections on LinkedIn.

When you combine the right words and pictures it gives you an opportunity to raise your profile, to inform the world as to who you are and to start to engage in the discussions and conversations that help you build new, long term relationships.

This is not a quick process!

It’s more akin to fly fishing than harpooning!

It can be slow and measured, early on, but when you share valuable advice and information, and begin to connect with other like-minded people, you simply never know where these new relationships can lead.

It is no longer necessary to leave our ‘future’ in the hands of others – social media allows us all to develop and showcase ‘Brand You’

Profiles should emphasise more about the person you are rather than exclusively focussing on what you do. Whoever you are, especially if you are in an advice giving (not transactional) role, it pays to remember that people buy people, first, before they buy products or services.

Just as you Google people you don’t know, before you are due to meet them, so others are doing the same to you.

What do they find?

What do they read?

Are you happy that what gets thrown up by the search engines is a good, professional reflection of who you are and what you do?

In today’s social media savvy world, ensuring these messages are positive and compelling can determine the success of your business or your advancement through the ranks in your career.

The social media and business networking, online, is not all about the technology or the software, it’s about the people.

It’s about you.

Yes, regarding LinkedIn, you need to know how to use its ‘advanced search’ capabilities for business development.

Yes, you do need to be conversant with how to use it for business and competitor intelligence. Indeed it will serve you well, for the growth of your businesses and in the management of your professional reputation, online, to be comfortable with all the various elements that LinkedIn, and indeed the several other platforms, have to offer.

But most importantly you need to be considering ‘Why’ you need to be proactive online and How it can help both you and the growth of your business/career.

Charles Darwin said “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”

At the forthcoming What’s Next Event in Wales, alongside several accomplished social media experts, I’ll be exploring how you can get the best out of LinkedIn.

Along with my other colleagues who will be speaking at this first high-impact social media event for Wales, we’ll be sharing social media strategies and tactics which could transform your business.

If ever the words of Charles Darwin held relevance, more than ever, that time is now.

To book your place and to register for this event and for more information, click here

You’ll kick yourself if you miss it!

It was once again reinforced to me, this week, how few business people really know how to use LinkedIn.

Even for those who tell me they visit the networking site regularly, I’m am commonly finding that some of its most valuable features are still unknown to them. That’s normal, of course, as no one has shown them how to use it!

If that talks to you, perhaps, when you recognise the potential sales opportunities vested in just knowing how to search prospects on LinkedIn, you’ll ask yourself “do I really know how to use LinkedIn?”.

Lets take a look at just one powerful LinkedIn utility: Advanced People Search.

If you would benefit from at least one new client in your business, this area is for you.

Whilst you will require a paid subscription to take advantage of some of the filtering I shall refer to, everyone can use the advanced search function (even those with free memberships), to find their perfect client.

First you’ll need to be very specific about what your perfect client looks like.
How do you define your prospect? You’ll need to be more specific than the answer I usually hear, to this question, where people tell me everyone can benefit from the service or product they provide. Even when asking for referrals from others, this is simply too broad to invoke a useful result.

Consider:

What is your preferred industry sector or vertical?

What is the preferred size of company/firm or organisation that you like to work with? Clearly they need to be of a size that paying your invoice shouldn’t be a stretch! When I probe this question, most people give me a turnover value, but, of course, since no companies on LinkedIn are giving us financial information, this important indicator can be replaced by the number of employees.

What is your preferred geographic location?

What is the title of the person you need to be speaking to who is empowered to make the buying decision?

When you know this, using the Advanced People Search can really work for you.

Simply select the ‘people’ drop down (this is the default setting in the search box on the right-hand side of the top navigation bar on LinkedIn) and click on the small word ‘Advanced’ that sits next to it.

Using the standard Boolean searching techniques that you would use when searching on Google or elsewhere on the internet, pop the employee title in the ‘Title’ box, set the ‘Location’, ‘Country’, ‘Postal Code’ and distance radius ‘Within‘.

Then select the relevant tick boxes from within ‘Industries’ and ‘Company size’…and hit the blue ‘Search’ button.

Remember to be patient with yourself if you don’t get the results you expect with your first try. Searching takes a bit of practice and setting the parameters can take some trial and error.

On the right hand side, just above the returns, you’ll see ‘Sort By – Relevance’. Take a look! This will enable you to filter the results by relationship to you (connection level 1, 2 or 3) Relationship and recommendations, by number of connections or the keywords you have selected.

Next to it you’ll see ‘view’ which will enable you to set the range of information you want to see against each result.

Further to the right, you’ll see exactly how many search ‘results’ have been returned to you and next to it you can save the ‘search’ parameter and also set up how often the list is refreshed and how often you wish to be notified of updates.

As a business developer, could you really ask for more?

But it’s the old story “you simply don’t know what you don’t know!”

So, to those who have been members for years and who are still not using this powerful utility, have you been honest with yourself about why you haven’t been getting real results from LinkedIn?

Maybe now is the time you asked yourself if you really know how to use LinkedIn?

With the rise of social media, the consumer finally has a voice.

A recent study released from Lancaster University clearly presents the fact that the value of the old, traditional, ‘push’ messages of marketing are rapidly losing their impact and that peer review and engagement with our customers is where real value and mutual benefit lies.

Effectively, for us all, what we say about ourselves is increasingly irrelevant, it’s what others say about us that potential customers are interested in.

Hence the value of Recommendations on LinkedIn.

Recommendations show that others value your work.
They build your credibility.
They build your reputation.
They strengthen your existing relationships.
They encourage others to have their say.
They are trusted.
With one click, recommendations can be traced back to their originator so others can gauge the gravitas with which to credit the comment.
Who is the person who commented?
What is their role?
Can I believe in their judgement?
….on LinkedIn, these questions can all be answered.

By being able to answer these questions, visitors to your profile, from within your network, can decide ‘is this the right service provider for me’ or ‘can I be assured of value for my money?’.

They act as a differentiator.

LinkedIn has now gone a step further and added Recommendations to the Company Profiles section, too.

Brilliant!

Now consumers can also offer Recommendations on a company’s physical products and services, not only on the individuals who work there.

Genius!

LinkedIn tells us that profiles with Recommendations are 3 x more likely to receive relevant enquiries from searches, than those profiles without.

For me the only problem is that Recommendations are only visible to those within your network . So whilst those outside of your network can see how many you have, they can’t read the content of them. Hence I advise my audiences and delegates to cut and paste them into other media such as websites, email signatures, your LinkedIn profile summary or even create a Slide Share and show them publicly on your profile.

Today, by accepting the following Recommendation from Steve Gilroy the CEO of Vistage UK & Ireland I am both delighted and humbled to have received 100 Recommendations for my work on delivering Business Networking Tips and training and on How to use LinkedIn

“As someone who has used LinkedIn for several years, and enthused about its use in marketing and business development, I thought I knew my way around the system and how to use it. Mark showed me that there were lots of new ways to use LinkeIn, lots of untapped potential and some new things to just go try. The thing I like about Mark’s approach is that he sets out the options and the potential, and then lets you decide which way to go. I’ve learned new ways to use my profile, how to make our entire LinkedIn strategy more efficient and SEO friendly, and how to use the applications within LinkedIn to reach a wider audience. Excellent stuff, well presented with passion.” February 1, 2011

This is, for me, the greatest reward for my efforts as a business networking skills trainer.

It shows that irrespective of age or gender; irrespective of experience or seniority; irrespective of wealth or influence,that I have been able to help many people from various backgrounds.

Everyone has been able to take away something of value from my presentations, whether personally, for the betterment of themselves, their careers or their businesses.

I am grateful to all those who have taken their valuable time to craft and submit their generous comments.

You have inspired me to continue to give my very best.

Today I am 100

Thank you!

We are witness to the greatest social change in a lifetime.

I recently heard it called an industrial evolution!

The largest brands on the planet, led most visibly by Nike, are moving away from the old advertising model towards an engagement model. People’s blind faith in brands has evaporated and the consumers voice finally has it’s medium. Socialmedia!

Businesses of all size have gone social.

New businesses can be born and showcased to the world, online, in minutes. Online, perception means everything. I’ve commented before that as fast as we move forward technologically, I believe the social media has stimulated the rebirth of  the old fashioned values of respect, dignity and ethics. No longer can the unscrupulous trade on, invisibly. Today, your name, your face and your brand are in the public domain. They can connect to you easier than ever before, and are free to comment on their experience of your product and/or service… and the world is listening.

Almost everyone I speak to from professional service practices to IT company’s tell me the same thing… that the majority of their new business comes from referrals. The majority of business comes from those who know, like and trust us and who are happy to refer us to their peers.  Because everyone is so pressed for time, peer review and peer introductions hold increased value and are more believable that glossy advertising, designed simply to persuade, not to help.

Peer review is the new champion!

Integrity is back.

Hurragh!

That’s why, for business, in my opinion, I believe LinkedIn represents, the most significant tool for business networking we have ever seen. And that’s why, whatever industry sector you are from, and how ever large or small your enterprise is, you you really do need to know how to use LinkedIn

Get Profiled

Here you can stand tall, raise your personal visibility and profile your products and services to millions of fellow business professionals.  As of January 2011, LinkedIn has 90 million members who can see you and see what you do.

Get seen

LinkedIn has loads of ways for you to get your brand seen and to get your voice heard. You can share your experiences, showcase your expertise, give and receive advice, learn from others, build new connections and make new friends

Get Business

This is networking! If you do it with politeness, professionalism and courtesy, the many people you already know offline will want to connect with you, online; and the new people you connect to online, will be able to get to know, like and trust you which will open the way for them to do business with you offline

That’s why you need to invest in some time in getting to grips with it!

I’m increasingly curious as to why so many people who have long had profiles still don’t know how to use LinkedIn for their business and personal benefit

Its so much more than an online directory or a recruiter’s tool

…and so that’s why I’ve created 100% LinkedIn.

I’m reading an excellent, best selling book called “INFLUENCE-the psychology of persuasion” by Robert B Cialdini PH.D and in it, amongst other topics, he talks about ‘The Reciprocity Rule’.

He examines how by doing something, freely, for another, people naturally feel obligated to repay the favour. He gives examples of ‘how human societies derive a truly significant competitive advantage from the reciprocity rule, and consequently they make sure their members are trained to comply with and believe in it’
Essentially, he shows that by doing an uninvited favour for another, it triggers a feeling of indebtedness. People feel indebted and feel a sense of obligation to repay the favour.

His studies, then, totally support the value of business networking in our society, and he provides numerous examples by way of evidence.

Unless you’ve got huge budgets available for media advertising, business networking is an important skill to master for customer acquisition and revenue generation.

In my opinion, until 2008, to be good at business networking and to be able to uncover and engage with new business opportunities, it served business professionals well to invest in my services, and to learn about, and how to manage, the tactical, interpersonal skills required to building profitable relationships, in face to face environments. This is still true today, but after the banking crash, and by halfway through 2009, an awareness of online business networking began to seep into the consciousness of business people on both sides of the Atlantic.

Now, in addition to the interpersonal networking skills, one also needs to be conversant with the online networking skills. For the business world this means knowing how to use LinkedIn. For those resistant to engaging with LinkedIn they still need to realise that its strategic value surpasses the need for technical mastery (for a short video click here)

The old model of the corporate world is one of an environment that is highly structured, hierarchical, very controlling, highly judgemental and selective. The new model of social media interaction is much more open and random. (To see the article by Thomas Power, Chairman of Ecademy, click here)

It is this paradigm shift that I find has caused a significant push-back, or resistance, amongst mostly the over 35’s, to the adoption of LinkedIn.

When I’m out there training, though I do still find a few pockets of executives who cannot move forward to embrace this new medium, my greatest joy comes from grey haired execs who come and shake my hand, at the end of my training, in relief, and tell me they’ve ‘got it!’

At What Next Event 2011 in March, Cardiff (for information click here) I’ll be simply explaining why you need to be on LinkedIn and how, by involving yourself, on a regular basis, in various ways, you can find your perfect, new-business prospect, engage with people whose interests and experience are just like yours and how you can showcase your expertise and raise your visibility amongst key decision makers who need your products and services, right now.

The old adage … ‘survival of the fittest’ no longer holds true!

In today’s fast paced and permanently changing business environment survival is only guaranteed to those who can adapt to change most quickly.

I’m sure you already recognise and understand that the outcome of good networking, a natural by-product of being good at this vital activity, is new business.

I look forward to helping you to understand the value, for your business, of LinkedIn (click here). Alongside my fellow speakers at What’s Next Event 2011, I’m keen to help you to adapt to the latest changes and trends, and to be more successful in your businesses, in 2011

Book now, here.

Places are limited.

Why it benefits legal professionals to master both online and offline networking skills

(890 words / Ave read time 4 minutes)

Despite our indefatigable race towards technological advancement it seems to me, happily, that our new ‘connected’ economy has returned us to old fashioned business values.

Hurrah ! Back-in-the-day, honesty, integrity, trust and generosity were foundations upon which businesses were built; now those days are back!

As the new millennium dawned, the old art of talking-to-one-another was tagged with a new name. A shiny, and new, label. It was called ‘Networking’.

The old fundamentals of Know, Like and Trust, the three stepping stones to building relationships, are once again dusted off. Recent studies show that people continue to turn away from the increasingly untrustworthy ‘push-advertising’ messages foisted upon them by powerful, corporate brands and choose instead to do business with people they like; people like them; people who like the same things as them; people who are genuinely interested in them. People are investing time in getting-to-know-people, again. Networking groups thrive. The move towards social business continues to happen and the social media platforms grow in importance.

As some 80% of a legal practise’s client base is normally within a 30 mile radius, it makes sense to be actively networking in your local business community – most of your business will be local and will be passed locally. Your strategy for success has to, therefore, include visibility, or, quite simply, you’ll miss out!

I’m sure you’ll agree with me, that being good at what you do, but being invisible, is bad for business, isn’t it?

The need to actively put yourself out-there and to network is now more important than ever. Research done by Albert Mehrabian [to view his work, please cut and paste into your browser http://bit.ly/9gDuQ] shows us that in one-to-one communication, 93% of meaning is conveyed non-verbally. So however brilliant the social media platforms are (and they are brilliant!), online can never, and will never, replace the benefit of meeting your clients face-to-face, looking at them eye-to-eye, exchanging a firm, confident handshake, and engaging in conversation, in person, to really build and cement lasting relationships. Online certainly is, however, an important place to engage, a great place to initially break the ice, start the relationship building process and to keep existing relationships alive and warm.

My entire, initial, business-networking training was exclusively vested in training interpersonal, face-to-face skills. Helping lawyers, and others from the professions, to understand the systems and processes they needed to employ to enable them to become confident and effective networkers, to seamlessly uncover new business opportunities and bring more money into their practises.

…… by mid 2008, however, I started to realise my successful, specialised, business-model was no longer enough!  ‘Online’ emerged, from being ‘just for kids’, to take it’s seat at the main table of business development. It became ‘serious’ and professionals started taking it seriously.

People (the perception was that of ‘young people’) had been successfully doing business on Facebook for sometime but LinkedIn arose as the place where ‘the grown-ups’, ‘the business people’, ‘the professionals’ began congregating. Here was the place where you managed your professional reputation, online. Where professionals, across all industry sectors, engaged in conversations, in groups, with like minded individuals, where you became connected, where you had a platform to showcase your expertise, to raise your profile, where your business questions could be asked and answered in real time. This has become the undisputed social media platform for business.

Through 2009 it surged forward and now LinkedIn boasts over 80 million business users, from all industry sectors as its members.

As you used questioning techniques to qualify potential prospects in face-to-face networking, so the ‘advanced search’ capability within LinkedIn can uncover all the business contacts you’ll ever need, within your geographic location, within the specific sectors that are of interest to you, within companies of the size you prefer to approach and with the very name of the decision maker you wish to engage.

LinkedIn is unsurpassed for business development, showing success rates that are much faster than the traditional referral model.

So the networking dots have joined! Networking now has two halves, making up the whole.

To be a truly rounded professional you now have to be good at both face-to-face networking and online networking.

To derive the full benefits of this new, business networking landscape, you should be regularly and consistently participating in both places. And, to save you precious time,and to ensure your time investment in both activities is profitable, it is advisable to acquire the skills, techniques, processes and understanding of how to get the best from these important opportunities, from a networking expert.

In this way you can be really effective in building brand profile, generating new business and you can ensure this new, combined, networking environment truly delivers against the potential it represents, for you, individually, and for your firm.

To contextualise the opportunity, as of October 2010, over 35 billion searches are made every month, through Google. Over 1 billion people are now online. Over 550 million are on Facebook and over 80 million businesspeople now maintain profiles on LinkedIn.

If maximizing the number of partners and fee earners who are effective at business development is important in this climate, there is one important question I ask you to consider…

Have you joined the dots for your firm yet?

********************************************************

The  author  of  this  article  is  Mark Perl,  leading UK authority  on  effective

and confident networking, both offline and online.

If you’d like Mark to deliver Networking Master Classes to your team, or to speak

at  your conference  please call  him  on 07907 438 454,  Email him direct on mark@markperl.com or visit www.markperl.com

In response to client demand Mark now also offers Managed LinkedIn Services.

If you are too busy to devote the time required to LinkedIn, but are keen to get the most out of this medium, Mark will help you build industry networks and generate new-business leads via LinkedIn.

See Mark’s LinkedIn Profile http://uk.linkedin.com/in/markperl

The thing that stood out for me, whilst I was out and about at events, last week, was that I was repeatedly hijacked!

This is obviously really common and I know you’ll recognise what I mean. I think you’ll have experienced this phenomenon, too ……..often.

It occurs when a person knows something about the topic being discussed. In many instances we see a person asking a question of their prospect and when the prospect starts talking, giving examples known by the person who asked, the networker simply takes the conversation back, Hijack’s it, and continues talking themselves.

For an example…

Networker: “Have you been Rome?”
Prospect: “Oh, yes! I loved that city”
Networker: “Oh me too! When I was last there we went to……. and I ……. and I ….. and we ate…… and we visited…… and we saw ………..” etc. …You get the picture!

My advice, even when you know a lot about the subject being discussed, is to ask a question and to simply use your own knowledge and experience to phrase further interesting questions, which will enable the other person to expand more fully.

If you find yourself talking too much here, and hijacking conversations, think: “STALL” Stop Talking And Listen/Learn …all about your prospect’s interests and experiences

Be interested instead of interesting.

Be on your prospect’s agenda, not your own.

This will yield big dividends.

It’s a small thing…. try it.

Have you been hijacked recently?…

I was out and about in town last night and just had to blog today…

I met a businessman I’d never met before, who simply ‘launched!’

He proudly blustered about how he has little time for ‘small talk’ and just likes to get straight to business…we’ve seen the before (sadly I’m sure we’ll see them again..)

It’s such a brutal approach, and frankly I wonder if many networkers like him, realise what they are doing when out networking?

It’s simply building relationships ….

How much business talk do you think goes on at networking events?

Please get a figure in your head before moving on.

5%?
20%?
40%?
60%?

What do you think?

From what I experience, I’d imagine it’s a low percentage. Anywhere between about 5% and 20%.

That makes the rest of the talk, ‘small talk’.

Though it’s the only phrase we have, I genuinely dislike this label.

When we use the word small, it most commonly indicates something of insignificance. I think it’s this label that inhibits people from understanding the importance of Small Talk.

Small talk is far from insignificant, as I believe you can’t do big business without the small talk.

I mostly find it’s ‘rocket launch’ networkers are the people who usually don’t stop talking themselves and who don’t normally walk away with many, if any, significant new business opportunities. How could they? They’ve built no rapport!They’ve not been listening! They’ve been waiting for their opportunity to speak and sell.

It’s fair to say, particularly in the advice giving sector (as opposed to the transactional sector), that people buy people. My advice to the chap last night, would be to accept that networking is a farming not a hunting process.

In general, most people prefer to do business with people:

• They like
• Who like them
• Who are like them
• Who like the same things as them

…and it’s in the Small Talk that we find out :

• What they’re like
• What they like
• If we like them
• If they’re like us
• And importantly… If they like us

Judging by the stalled conversations and the worries that people share with me about going networking, I believe that most people simply fail to prepare for the Small Talk.
They fail to prepare things to chat about and to ask questions about.

So if we accept how valuable small talk is, in the relationship building process, then surely it certainly warrants some time investment, during the preparation and planning phase for any event, don’t you think?

Here’s my tip.

Have a raft of topics, apart from business, to ask your prospect about. Prepare these in advance. Grab a paper, grab a magazine, listen to a chat show on the radio, in car on the way to the event, but do pop various topics in your pocket, before you arrive

Things like:-

• Hobbies
• Sport
• Interests
• Current affairs
• The day’s news headlines and burning topical issues
• Latest movies
• Or you can even listen for other people’s accents and try “It doesn’t sound like you’re a local, where do you come from originally?”

This will lay the foundation for relationship-building and will create the first link, the initial connectivity, between you and your prospect. It’s from here that anything is possible…. But if you don’t walk through ‘here’ moving forward to new opportunities is most probably impossible

Just this little shift in awareness and preparation can begin to make your networking less stressful and more effective………… it would also make it a more pleasant experience for us all

Try it.

Let me know….

What’s made you SHRUG out there, lately?

It takes time to build rapport.

It is widely believed to be one of the most important features or characteristics of unconscious human interaction.

Significant foundations for this are achieved in the ‘small talk’, which we’ve covered in another posts.

You’ll notice that many people simply don’t take sufficient time to build rapport. They just rush into telling you about all their services

Without building rapport people won’t feel comfortable enough to chat freely and openly about themselves or their businesses.

Without building rapport, problems and forthcoming changes will simply not be uncovered from your prospects. Without the ability to unlock these two elements, opportunities to do business with them will remain hidden.

Failing to build rapport shows your prospect that you are not genuinely interested in them. I call it behaving like a verbal brochure! I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of it, too.

Failing to build rapport alerts your prospect that you are only interested doing business and in getting to that point by the shortest route.

Instant Rapport by Michael Brooks recognizes that building rapport is essential not only in our relationships but in life itself, and his book will help show you how to develop this life skill.

I’ve read it and I recommend it.

It pays to remember that networking should be likened more to fly-fishing than to harpooning! More to farming than to hunting.

I’m finding people out-there are in a hurry. More often than not behaving like they’re at a speed-networking sessions. Telling you about their business quickly; then just as quickly looking for ‘exit’ to move-on

If you invest the time, over those first few minutes, when you meet your prospect for the first time, to build rapport, your results will show a dramatic improvement and your time investment should being to yeild better results.

So beware! If you’re simply rushing-in, the fish will swim away and you’ll have wasted another three hours of your valuable, personal time

That’s not what you want, is it?