You're Going To Be Great At This!

In my book, "You're Going To Be Great At This! " I give the reader a break with an occasional story which is pretty dumb, thus the name Dumb Story. Some people have commented that they prefer the dumb stories so much they hope my next book would be filled with them. Instead of making you wait, I've decided to throw some dumb stories into this blog. And the stories are all true, I've just changed the names of people and places to protect the innoncent, guilty and me. Dumb Story Several years back, I was working for a large life insurance carrier. They constantly had training sessions and sales meetings, so it was expected they would hold a huge, 3-day sales conference in a major city. All of the first-year people got to go for free and a few of us in our crew hung out together. Meetings in the daytime, receptions in the evening and to the bars late at night. And that's where one guy, Bob, met a young lady who was very pretty with dark hair and dark eyes....

Over the years I've tried every traditional prospecting method out there. From "warm markets" to cold calling, I've done it all. Eventually I became exhausted of the fair to middling results. Something had to change. In my book , I mention that the first thing we need to sell is ourselves. Getting on a soapbox and telling everyone how great your company is will work sometimes, but first and foremost, we need to promote ourselves. With this in mind I've refocused my energy. And I ran across a great article by Dew Tinnin, which confirmed my suspicions. Instead of promoting my business, Surf Financial Brokers , which I've done for the last few years to mediocre results, I've decided to market myself. Surf Financial will still be there. It's not going anywhere, but looking for people one at a time is a slow, hard process. And trying to get referrals from them is tougher. I took an honest look at my business recently and decided that in order to i...

We've coning to the end of the "networking trilogy", but just like Star Wars, there will be more of this in the future. Let's touch on social media and how to use it to network successfully. In general, the rule here is that if you're going to try to use these platforms remember that you get what you pay for. And since you probably aren't paying much (unless you upgrade to LinkedIn's premium service), you should expect a low ROI.  On all platforms I suggest you take a slow approach to build a rapport. With all of the internet scams out there nobody wants to be "sold" on social media. Make your approaches as low-key as possible. That being said, you are investing your time, and if you can find an efficient use of your time the better off you will be. Don't spend hours on end trying to find out how to use the next Pinterest only to learn that it's not getting you anywhere. I spend approximately 20 minutes a day posting on social media, ...

So you've waited all week to find out how to network efficiently and effectively. I'm so happy you made it back! In Part 1, I gave you some ideas of where to find networking groups. I failed mention that there are two types of groups - exclusive and non-exclusive. Exclusive groups are the ones that typically only have one person from an industry. For example, a group would only have one baker, one realtor, one plumber, etc. Non-exclusive means that a group is open to as many people as want to participate. For now I'm going to discuss non-exclusive groups. If you're introverted or not really comfortable talking to strangers, you can sit at the table of the world's largest networking group, LinkedIn*. If you're not familiar with it (and you should be), think of it as Facebook minus all of the pictures of kids, vacations and political garbage. It's a way to network with people in your area, state, all of the country, and the world too. But it should only be...