Bob Burg, in his program on Endless Referrals, defines networking as "cultivating mutually beneficial, give-and-take relationships".  This results in a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Notice here that in a give-and-take relationship...the give is first!

So...why do you read my blog?  Are you looking to improve communication skills? Acquire tips on finding a job? Are you a salesperson or business owner looking for new clients?

Are you looking for new ways to sincerely give to and help others?

Let's see what financial guru Robert Kiyosaki says about where our focus should be...

'My rich dad gave money as well as education.  He believed firmly in tithing.  "If you want something, you first need to give," he would always say.  When he was short of money, he simply gave money to his church or his favorite charity.
If I could leave one single idea with you, it is that idea.  Whenever you feel "short" or in "need" of something, give what you want first and it will come back in buckets.  That is true for money, a smile, love, friendship.  I know it is often the last thing a person may want to do, but it has always worked for me.  I just trust that the principle of reciprocity is true, and I give what I want.  I want money, so I give money, and it comes back in multiples.  I want sales, so I help someone else sell something, and sales come to me... 
In my life, over all these years, whenever I felt needy or short of money or short of help, I simply went out or found in my heart what I wanted, and decided to give it first.  And when I gave, it always came back.'
-From the best-selling book Rich Dad, Poor Dad

I want money, so I tithe.  Why would God grow my income unless I made it a practice to give a percentage of it back?

I want sales, so I help others sell.  I want friends, so I have become a friend.  What is it that you desire most?  What are you doing to help others achieve it?

I am so lucky to work for the Mary Kay company: a company based on GIVING, GIVING women an opportunity that wasn't available at the time Mary Kay Ash created hers and based on GIVING women luxurious gifts like diamonds and pink Cadillacs that we wouldn't buy for ourselves.

I am so lucky to be in the promotional products business: an industry based on the idea that when you GIVE a promotional product to a potential customer, you are more likely to RECEIVE their business later.  This has generated more call-backs, more referrals, more appointments and more sales for me as well as for my clients.

So how does this apply to networking?

Bob Burg also says, "All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to people they know, like, and trust".

So what do you need to do to get more business?  Get more people to KNOW, LIKE, and TRUST you!!!! 

If you don't know where to start, I recommend the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey, because he has an entire chapter dedicated to this idea of interpersonal relationships.  I also really like it because the focus of his book is on morals, values and integrity (it is hard to be 'liked' and 'trusted' if you are not 'like-able' and 'trustworthy'!)

You are your own ambassador at a networking event.  Networking is about opening relationships vs. closing a sale.

The biggest irony that Bob Burg illuminates is that the more interested you are in someone else, the more interesting they find you to be.  It is a fabulous paradox and I LOVE IT!!!!  This means that I don't have to worry about sales pitches and talking about myself....I need to work on being a good question-asker!  I need to care about other people and what they do!  I CAN DO THAT!

And Bob gives us an amazing list of questions to help us with that endeavor:

1. How did you get started in the ____________ business?

2. What do you enjoy most about what you do? 
Why ask this instead of its counterpart?  Because I love "feel-good" questions.  I want people to associate good things, happy memories, and the pleasant parts of their occupation with me.  They will remember the good feelings they had when they talked to me and associate pleasantness with me.  When everyone else wants to gripe and complain (the economy this, no money that, rude people...blah, blah, blah) I am focused on everything that is pleasant and happy and hopeful!

3. What separates you from your competition?
Everyone loves to brag!  This is your opportunity to let them!

4. What advice would you give someone starting out in the __________ industry (or in sales/business/etc.)?
This question is especially great for men and women who are older and have years worth of experience to share.  Who knows, you might learn something valuable while also making someone else feel good!  I LOVE IT!

5. What ONE thing would you do with your business if you knew you could not fail?
People love to dream!  This is your chance to find out about and encourage another person's dream.  In a world of dream-stompers, you can be an encourager and help others' dreams come to fruition!  But you can't do that if you don't find out what other people's dreams are....

6. What significant changes have you seen in your profession over the years?


7. What do you see as the coming trends in the _________ business?
6 and 7 both allow someone to share their experiences in the past to help share insight into the future.  I love hearing the answers to this question, especially as it pertains to real estate and finances!!!

8. What is the strangest or funniest incident you've experienced in your business?
Have you ever had a moment when you said "I'm gonna look back on this in 5 years and laugh"?  This is your opportunity to be the one person who cares about hearing about those moments in other people's lives!  Someone has been waiting 5 years for you to ask this question!

9. What ways have you found to be the most effective for promoting your business?
This one is a great way to learn from others' and happens to be one that is specific to my industry!  Win-win!

10. What one sentence would you like people to use when describing the way you do business?

You don't need to learn all of these questions.  You'll find that there are a couple that come most naturally to you and that you enjoy hearing the answers the most.

Now for the GOLDEN QUESTION once you have established some rapport with the questions above:

How can I know if someone I'm speaking to would be a good prospect for you?

If you want other people to find prospects for you, first you have to be proficient at finding prospects for others...and this question is the way to do it!  How would you feel if someone asked you this question!?  Wouldn't you feel like they genuinely cared about helping you?  Wouldn't it make you want to help them!?  Bob Burg has given us pure gold!

"You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want" ~ Zig Ziglar

GIVE FIRST, GET LATER (AND IN ABUNDANCE)!!!!!

Next week (in addition to re-committing myself to time management and consistency...oops!) we will let Donald Trump and Gloria Mayfield Banks help us with goal-setting, in "3 Blind Mice: Everyone needs a vision!"

Hte Ipmortnace of Yuor Wrod, Waht Hppaens Hwen Hte Meassge Gtes Mxied Up

There are a few different elements to the topic today, so I'll start by posing the following questions:

What is your word?  Why is it important?
What is the difference between your "word" and a "message"?
How can a message get "mixed up"?
And how can we prevent that?

Every life experience I've had, be it personal or professional, has taught me that your word is your lifeline!  People throw around phrases like "his word is golden", "my word is my bond", "don't tell me, show me", "her word has no meaning", and all of these phrases have a common theme...your word is only as good as the perception that it is intrinsically linked to action.  People lose faith in another's word when it is not backed up by action.  Therefore, trust, honesty, and integrity are all interlocked with this idea of a person's word

And I don't think it is a coincidence that when referring to whether a message has been effective or not, we generally use the word "integrity" (the integrity of the message was good, i.e. it was effective, or vice versa).

A message is when your word becomes action to achieve a certain purpose.

By the way, I'm the crazy pun/word/spelling-bee nerd.  Words and language fascinate me!  And I LOVE the thesaurus!!!  Never a Word document has been opened without relying on my trusty friend Thesaurus to assist me in my search for the perfect word to convey...yes...to convey my message!  (I swear my tangents always come full circle eventually)

And my friend Thesaurus assisted me once again this evening.  Because the synonyms for communication and communicate can be divided into two different categories: one-way and two-way.  Because communication can be both information and an interchange, and to communicate can be to impart and inform OR to converse, confer, or chat.

And this is why for a message to truly be effective, I believe we have to think of it as the two-way kind of communication.

Most people know what the "telephone game" is.  A game you probably played as a kid where 5 or 6 or 10 children sit side-by-side in a line and at one end, you start a message such as "I love the color blue".  Then you whisper it quietly in the person's ear next to you and you pass along the message until you get to the end and everyone laughs when the  last child stands and says "Isle of the coal and dew".  Funny when it's a game, not so funny when it's a business deal, or a sales pitch, or a radio ad or a commercial on tv.  The premise remains: while we remain human, miscommunication will always happen when communication is viewed as a one-way (sometimes runaway) train.

Mary Kay Ash was known for frequently saying "we have two ears and one mouth, we should learn to use them proportionally".

I'm not super tech-savvy but my basic understanding of the Internet is that there are packets of information sent from your computer to a server or out onto the World Wide Web, etc. and information is then sent back to your computer keeping everything updated.  Every step of the process is two-way communication.  When your internet connection is bad, sometimes your "packets" of information can still get out, but the feedback is interrupted and the two-way communication process becomes disjointed (and I get really annoyed and want to throw my computer out a window or re-enact the scene from Office Space, replacing the wayward fax machine with my computer).

And for any business person who lost a deal because of a miscommunication, whether it be in pricing, appointment-setting, responsibility-delegation, whatever the case may be...we know that frustration due to Internet connectivity issues pales in comparison to the despair of lost income because of interpersonal communication issues.

So how do we fix this?  We rely on Mr. Thesaurus to help us distinguish between one-way and two-way communication and we listen to the words of Mary Kay telling us we should spend two-thirds of our time listening to feedback from the people around us.

Another way to prevent this (prevent what? that phrase was kind of ambiguous, hmmm....) is by being specific.  When I took a stand-up comedy class at the Improv in Addison my teacher used this example: 
Which one sounds funnier?  I drove around in my ugly, old car or I plodded along in my 1972 lime-green Ford Pinto with the missing bumper and mis-matched rims.
When I was taking a Careers in Communication class at A&M we studied resume-writing and the "rule of specificity" applies here also.
Which one is more effective?  I called customers, entered purchase orders, and made sales or I called 50 customers, entered 15 purchase orders and made $1000 in sales each day on average.

In sum,
words (should) = action
message = words + action + purpose
effective message = specific words + specific action + specific purpose + listening to or asking feedback from the receiver to make sure the message was interpreted correctly

Stephen Covey says it well in the 5th chapter of his book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" when he says,
"Ethos is your personal credibility, the faith people have in your integrity and competency.  It's the trust that you inspire, your Emotional Bank Account.  Pathos is the empathic side - it's the feeling.  It means that you are in alignment with the emotional thrust of another person's communication.  Logos is the logic, the reasoning part of the presentation.  Notice the sequence: ethos, pathos, logos - your character, and your relationships, and then the logic of your presentation".

First, your word (or your company's word) must mean something, second there must be a perception that you understand your recipient and last, there is the actual syntax, word choice and purpose of your message that creates this, your communication triangle, based on trust and built on sides of two-way communication.

Well, if you got this far, you might actually be interested in reading next week's topic: "When You Say Nothing At All".  See you next week!