How many people you met two or three years ago are on your radar today? Do you know what people you worked with five or ten years ago are doing now? And how often do you see or at least correspond with former classmates and classmates on social networks?
Today we are going to talk about how to maintain existing personal, professional, and social connections so that it would be mutually interesting for you and the people from “Contacts” on your phone, “Friends” on social networks, and just acquaintances with whom you “cross paths” from time to time on some issues. So, our topic is networking: how to keep in touch. If you’re more interested in a question like casino bonus India, check out the article at the link.
Networking: when there is no need to support anything!
Let’s start with a bit of clarification. In principle, if you live your whole life in a small provincial town and work at the same job, your circle of acquaintances may remain unchanged for decades. In this case, you may know what your former classmates, colleagues at work, friends, parents, and pets live and breathe.
In these circumstances, it will be harder to remember, but whether you met new people in the last 2-3 years in principle? But not everyone is lucky enough to live in the quiet, calm “backwoods” with its measured pace of life.
But in the big city where you recently moved, you do not have direct access to all the people you need. So these contacts have to work on. If you are an entrepreneur or sales manager, you must constantly “spin” in search of new contacts, clients, and customers to sell their products.
And then there are professions, the essence of which is to communicate to find the necessary information. Such communication can take up to 80% of all working and non-working hours. For example, these professions are journalists, investigators, diplomats, and intelligence officers.
In this regard, studies claim that in a year, on average, a person loses up to 30% of contacts.
Among these percentages are accidental and useless contacts and those that turn out to be more toxic and stressful than helpful. So, of course, you should not maintain harmful and ineffective communications but give them up, freeing up time and energy for networking and meeting new people.
However, it also happens that the acquaintance is helpful, and the contact is necessary for the short term, but there is no way to keep in touch. The statistics here are similar to the casino bonus: the connection falls into the same 30%, which “falls off” and loses relevance within a year or earlier.
Networking: what is it? In simple words
Networking is a social and professional activity to form a circle of friends and acquaintances who have connections or are working in your area of interest for quick and practical solutions to your tasks.
Today you can find many recommendations on where to find the people you need, how to get acquainted on social networks, at seminars and conferences, what to talk about at the first meeting, and how to make a first impression. Many events even include special networking zones.
Meanwhile, the continuation is no less important than the beginning. And sometimes even more critical. Especially if right now you and your new acquaintance’s objective need in joint activities is not, but in the short term, you intend to address him with some request.
Yes, networking is about maintaining and “serving” contacts, not just generating them. Roughly the same way you gas up a car to keep it running and or sharpen kitchen knives to cut. Or continue to work out after you’ve lost the extra weight; otherwise, all your previous efforts will go to waste, and you’ll gain the excess weight again.
Networking: the main rules of successful continuation
In principle, if you succeeded in “pre-preparation,” there should be no particular difficulties. What is included in the “preliminary preparation”? These are recommendations for the initial stage of networking:
- Be an interested listener.
- Being a prepared interlocutor.
- Asking questions will draw the interlocutor into the conversation and stimulate their detailed responses.
- To prepare and correct an offer in the course of the conversation “which will be difficult to refuse.
It is quite enough if the person is interested in you, then he is more likely to agree to communicate with you further. What you can do:
- Offer the person help if they need it, and you objectively can help.
- Ask the person for a small favor.
- In both cases, it’s essential that the following contact doesn’t involve too much effort and energy and doesn’t “knock” your new acquaintance out of their usual rut. The first meeting does not create the level of trust to accept global help from you or to spend a lot of time on your business.
So, after you have thought up a reason to continue communicating, you have to remind yourself and the agreements you made within one or two days from the moment of acquaintance in the correct form and continue sharing.
It will be better if it is possible to shift the focus of the budding relationship from rigid specifics like “you – to me, I – to you” to some “neutral” state when the communication will not be completely tied to a specific cause or event. In this regard, the author’s observation about the “three components of successful relationships” is also interesting:
- Common interests.
- Emotional empathy.
- A shared circle of communication.
They may as well be called “points of contact,” but the point, I think, is clear. The likelihood of forming a trusting relationship is higher when you have common interests and emotional attachment.
Openness is essential to forming a trusting relationship, and the first step should be taken by the person most interested in continuing the relationship. Former scouts insist that openness is needed in areas most important to most people, such as family, health, and children. Ideally, it would help if you communicated with family members of the person you are interested in, make it a norm to discuss health, finances, hobbies, choosing a school for the children, a resort for vacation, and other components of life.
In addition, it helps keep in touch with each other in your leisure time. In particular, joint parties. There are a few rules for organizing such events to create a positive atmosphere, help everyone talk and strengthen the foundation on which your relationship is built. Effective networking generally involves constant planning and constant evaluation of the results achieved.
Suppose there are a lot of contacts accumulated. In that case, it is necessary to rank them by priority and “warmth. So, if important contacts are still in the “cold” zone and you have seen the person only once, you should make an effort to “warm up” communication so that your second meeting will take place shortly.
In addition, there is a reason to “break” the map of contacts by city. It benefits those who travel a lot or often go on business trips. Before a trip, you can constantly refresh your memory on who among your acquaintances lives in the area where you are going. And, accordingly, offer to see each other if your acquaintance has such an opportunity.
