Recently: I've had a couple very unique experiences in my networking world and wanted to share these as two very BAD ways, to deal with people. I ascribe to the axiom that you need to be nice to everyone because you never know when you will need to deal with that person in another capacity. I have two examples to illustrate this point.
The first example happened over the course of about 3 months. In December my company joined a local chamber of commerce to help generate business in a target area. I started a campaign to introduce myself to the membership by email and phone call. The email message was started with "hello fellow chamber member" a brief description of my company and a request to meet. many people agreed to meet, many people said no and many just simply did not respond. But one response stood out to me. The response was "sorry not interested thx." and it indicated that it was sent from an iphone. In this particular case the company is a husband and wife run small business. Since the response was from a cellphone I asked if it was the husband or the wife I was speaking to since the email did not indicate either way. They responded "both." In other words don't try talking to my spouse because we don't want any. Okay, I can take a hint and I certainly am not looking to make any enemies. So I scratched them off and moved on. Here is where things get interesting, my business is to sell against Verizon and that is how I describe what my company does, "we are a Maryland based alternative to Verizon." I visited a new networking group today that is part of the chamber we joined. There was a small group of people and I struck a chord with the group because there were many questions about telephone and Internet that came up and my industry dominated the conversation. In particular, one woman was complaining how much she hates her current provider and wanted to change but couldn't because she was in a contract with them for another couple years. I asked a few more questions and gave her some sound advice to help her business. I also told her my companies product wasn't a good fit but I would be glad to review her bill for her and make some further recommendations to help. She also had a billing issue that I said I could help her straighten out as well. So who is this woman? She is the spouse that told me"sorry, not interested thx." Amazing how the people that need your help the most are often the most reluctant to reach out and ask. If you are one of these people, try to be a little more open minded the next time you get a call or email.
The second story truly has a sad ending. I spend a great deal of time looking for potential clients through linkedIn. I have gotten in many doors and won many customers because I was able to establish common ground through our mutual connections (I blogged about that previously). In fact many of them have said "normally I don't take calls like this but if you know "fill the name here" then that is good enough for me." Last week I found a small business owner in my community and we had several mutual connections and a handful of them I consider good friends. So I called him, said who I was and what my company does. I told him I found his profile on linkedin and that we had several mutual connections. I mentioned the people I was particularly close to and he responded to one in particular saying "you know her." and I said "yes, she is a good friend of mine. He asked if any of them were customers and I pointed out two that were and mentioned another was a business partner that has sold our services in the past. He said he wanted to make some phone calls before agreeing to meet with me and I responded I thought that was fair and would follow up in one week. I shot him a quick email to thank him for his time and said I would follow up in one week. I made a note on my calendar and moved on. A few days later I received an email from one of those mutual connections and she was outraged that I had used her name while cold calling and that in the future I should contact her first to request an introduction and if she decides that my product can help her customer then she would make the introduction. Because if I don't conduct business in this manner it could be very damaging to her reputation. I want to be clear about my relationship with this person. She was someone that I considered a very good friend. She had invited me and my family to her house for 4th of July picnics before, we would borrow movies from one another, we had gone out to dinner and lunch together, we would leave each other silly voice-mails to make one another laugh, in short we were very good friends. I was shocked to receive this email so I reached out to the person to discuss the matter. She sent me a text message that she did not have time to chat and even if she did she would not share any further details with me & don't use her name in that capacity ever again. I lost a good friend today because they didn't understand the fundamentals of what true networking is.
In summary: you never know who you are dealing with so be nice to everyone & networking at it's core is about building strong relationships, it's not a one way street.
Thanks for reading today
Mike S.
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