How do you network successfully?

Grant Leboff: One of the things I know you've always been very keen on, and very good at, is networking. And for a lot of people, they're not quite sure how to make that successful. So for you, what are the keys of networking successfully?

Warren Cass: Do you know this is such a broad subject, networking. We could be here for hours and I know that's not the form of your videos but first of all, let's just have a look at why people are typically apprehensive of networking. Our mutual friend Andy Lopata wrote the book 'And death came third' and the whole title of the book was the premise that they looked to people's biggest fears, and 'death' was in third place. In first place was, I think, public speaking and second was 'walking into a room full of strangers' which is essentially what networking is. It's an intimidating environment. And for most to relax into it it's quite a task, particularly if looking at the disk profiles you're more on the introvert side of things.

But there's a couple of things. First of all you can demystify the room so, there's a whole load of authors that I would recommend going and having a look on the subject. Ivan Misner is great, Rob Brown's great, Andy Lopata's great, Will Kintish is great, go and see what they've done on it. But if you walk into a room and you understand the psychology of the room right from the outset, it's far less intimidating. Remember that there's an etiquette - would be my my main tip. So if you go to a networking event and think it's just about interrupting conversations, talking about yourself and selling, your you're going to be making a big mistake. Networking isn't a selling environment.

It's all about building relationships with people. And if you go to lots of different events, once, you're not building relationships. You're effectively collecting business cards and collecting data.

So my advice would be; pick one or two groups where the personalities in the group resonate with you. Where, perhaps the relevance of the professions in the group present opportunities - may be through partnerships, but certainly for referrals - take the time to connect with people on a human level, rather than just going to talk products and services. If you say you're going to do something do it - the follow up is the most overlooked thing and incredibly important. But do remember there's an etiquette. You need to be respectful of other people's conversations. Even though the thing about how you approach a group to join in... rather than just going in and interrupting the conversation, one of the nice techniques is to walk up, keep that one step back, make eye contact with the person who is speaking - who will naturally take the pause in the conversation at that point and say 'Mind if I join you?' This shows that you're respectful of the conversation we're having before.

It's such a broad topic - I could talk about this for hours but definitely get stuck in there. Remember; 20, 30 years ago, networking wasn't even a chapter in a marketing book and now it's a multi-million pound industry, face to face, and a multibillion pound industry on line, if you include social networking So it's it's not a case of whether you should do it? You absolutely should, it is just how you do it to represent your brand as best you possibly can.

Grant Leboff: And one of the keys, of course, to networking well is to be able to ask questions when you're with someone. What's the way of thinking about that? How can someone start to think about, well OK I get the to have a conversation, I'm not going to just talk about myself and sell, but how do I get into a position where I'm asking some good questions?

Warren Cass: If you're skilled at asking questions, the first question you ask should always create your second question - if you're properly listening to somebody. But actually, one of the one of the biggest ways of building rapport with somebody is to is to be interested in them. So be interested - not interesting - I can't remember the details of the research, but they did a social experiment with a chap who was flying back from the US and they gave him the task of keeping the guy next to him speaking for the whole of the flight, without revealing a single piece of information about himself. So for seven hours on this flight, this person our conversation I ask questions and had a conversation, but he was just showing utter interest. And when they landed they asked that person how their flight was and it was amazing, it was a brilliant flight. And the guy who sat next to him? Oh, what a guy, what a fellow! What was his name? Couldn't tell you - had no idea he had revealed nothing but had be made to feel amazing because somebody showed interest in him. So... we all have that power. If you go to a networking event and you just show genuine interest in people and ask really good questions, you'll accelerate rapport and accelerate the relationship.

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