Happy December 1st.
Where did 2017 go? I recall as a kid that a year took forever. Now as a boomer, it seems each year flies by, supersonically.
We are fast approaching time for holiday parties and get-togethers, either business or social.
Meeting new people/reacquainting with others? As part of the meeting conversation, let them know your value proposition. Perhaps they need your services. Perhaps they know others who do. Perhaps they don’t realize it yet. You have to work it:
- Is this your initial contact and is your elevator pitch really honed? Are they stimulated enough by your self-introduction to ask a follow-up question? That’s the goal…conversation.
- Then it’s your turn: as you converse with him/her are you asking open questions like “why do you do what you do?” “what aspects of your work makes you referable?” rather than the dull “what do you do?”
- Are you probing them in conversation for ways you can work better with them–not sell them, but help them?
- As you exchange business cards, does yours show your LinkedIn profile URL?
- Are you going to be memorable in other ways based on this short meeting? Chances are there are others in the room that do what you do. Are you amazing-er than them?
- Did you make it easy to find and read about you on LinkedIn, where you tell further in your own words, “why you”?
- Did you arrange to meet again over coffee or lunch to find ways to continue a collaborative conversation?
- And at the end of that face-to-face follow-up meeting when you went deeper and broader in ways to collaborate, and only if you like that other person, respect that other person, think that other person is refer-able to your entourage, did you agree to connect on LinkedIn?
- Did you personalize that LinkedIn invitation, giving context, what you discussed and a call to action so you both actually connect and nurture the budding relationship?
- And finally once connected, did you on-board that new connection with an article they might enjoy to prove you nurture your new relationships?
You have work to do, even if you are at a party, and thereafter.
But this work can be enjoyable and beneficial to you and your new colleague.
Happy holiday party season.
It’s a process into the new year.
