Keith Ferrazzi, Author, Never Eat Alone
Founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight
Catharine Fennell sits down to discuss best practices in networking with relationship and networking guru and bestselling author, Keith Ferrazzi.
"Technology should be seen as a tool. It may be used as a step to help fill in the front end of your relationship pipeline."
| Book: Never Eat Alone | Blog: nevereatalone.typepad.com Listen to the audio podcast. |
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I have always felt that networking is one skill that most business people haven’t mastered and when you read Keith’s book, you will understand why. So, when I ‘virtually’ sat down with Keith I had the opportunity to ask him some of the most commonly asked questions that we hear from our audience...
CF: Many corporate employees feel that networking doesn’t have the same payoff or importance as it does for an Entrepreneur. Is there a difference?
KF: In the end, you really are an independent agent—an individual brand inside the company. So many things that you want to get accomplished inside the company at the end of the day boils down to one thing: people. Relationships are the core to our success. The word networking is a misnomer, because a lot of people think of networking as only meeting people outside the company for the next job.
Never Eat Alone is about how to deepen the relationships around you to achieve the success that you deserve and that at the same time, by strengthening those relationships you are strengthening the joy and increasing the manner in which you interact with others so that you have a more fulfilled life.
You need to sell your brand: If you are a leader, you are selling your vision to a group of people who you want to follow you. If you are an individual managing your own career, you are selling yourself. If you are single, you are in sales. No matter what it is, we are all in sales everyday of our lives and it is the people that we are touching that will make a difference between success and failure in sales.
CF: Is there a difference between a networker and a connector?
KF: No, it’s all just words. The important part about networking is identifying that others are critical to our success, in whatever it is we want to achieve, and proactively identifying who those people are.
Reaching out to people with generosity, transparency and developing real intimacy with those people around us-- and then thinking about a series of strategies on how you reach out to folks periodically to let them know that you are thinking about them, is the way to build successful relationships. What networking is not, is schmoozing or insincere.
CF: How do you create intimacy using social networking technologies?
KF: People are seeing a tool, which is a technology tool or a database tool or email, and they are seeing it as de-personalizing their capacity to build a network and connect. But it doesn’t. It’s just a tool.
You can choose to rely only on that tool, email as an example, and then, in fact, it would be de-personalizing. It may be a step to help fill in the front end of your relationship pipeline. It could help you in identifying individuals more quickly and keep your database more fresh and alive.
It doesn’t mean that you should throw away all of the old things like face to face contact and phone calls. Just because you have technology doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t connect. However, to move a relationship from an acquaintance to a friend is best achieved through a face-to-face contact – although it can be supported by technological contact.
CF: What’s the biggest networking “no-no” you see?
KF: There are two general schools of ‘no-no’s’. First there are individuals that lack the true intimacy and care for those individuals around them. They tend to be swallow people. These are the people, whom you are having a conversation with and their eyes are darting all over the room, trying to figure out the next best person to talk to because they have already figured out that you are not. If Bill Clinton, could focus on an individual enough that to feel that they were the only thing that mattered, so can you!! These people rate their networking capability based on the size of their database. Instead, focus on a person like they are the only one in the room.
Secondly, there are people who try and connect through serendipitous means and they can’t see any means to connect with people other than by accident or on a one-to-one basis. These people romanticize the meeting rather than proactively targeting the individual. Reach out to others with transparency, honesty and sincerity and you can build real relationships and maybe even become great friends.
CF: What is good advice for people who feel that they do not have anything to offer in a networking relationship?
KF: Many people ask, what do I have to offer? Why would this person want to talk to me? Everyone has something to offer when they reach out with generosity. Think proactively about what the generosity is you can impart on someone. I am more inclined to stay in touch with someone that I have invested in. This is called universal currency – making people feel that they make a difference in this world. In general, find out what someone needs and try and fulfill that need.
CF: What do you see as the future of networking?
KF: It will be the same as it always has been. I plan to dial up what is really all about real relationships and connecting in a way in the corporate world such that we use the training and development in the professional world to change people’s DNA and change the way they think about relationships and then they are going to go home and treat their kids better, and that’s what I am passionate about.
