A good friend sent this to me today and I thought I’d pass it on…
I took a some liberty to change one word in this bit – “sales” to “networking.”
I have often said in my presentations that in networking 80% of what we do is a waste of time (or feels like it). If we could figure out what 20% to focus on, we’d have unparalleled success. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that!
“Remember the basic premise of any “networking” endeavor:
“You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs to meet a prince.”
That’s the job and you’ve got to kiss ‘em. Don’t try
to substitute. You can’t mail them a kiss. You can’t
stay in the office and wait for them to hop in and
kiss you. You can’t let advertising change them into
princes. You can’t ask your assistant to kiss them
(he or she hasn’t got the stomach for it). You can’t
kiss the same one 40 times – it doesn’t take a lot of
smooching to tell a prince from a frog. You can’t
change kissin’ styles every 30 days or spend all your
time in kissin’ school. You’ve got to spend time with
frogs and you’ll find them out there in the marshes.
Then, when you find one, you’ve got to make
contact. Kissing is a contact sport.”
Networking is a contact sport too! No matter how great the tools are that facilitate our networking – and there are some great tools – eventually, we have to meet people one on one. I know, sounds like old school to all of you under 30 folks, but trust is developed through shared experiences. Developing trust is critical to networking, business and personal success.
So get out there and start kissing some frogs!