I guarantee that whoever reads this title out of context will be pretty shocked and somewhat relieved I'm actually talking about services or goods you can sell.
I mentioned in this and this previous posts that I'm looking to grow my networking skills in 2023. Personally, the greatest barrier I had to break through was the fear of other people's opinions or even a lack of interest in what I can bring to the table. I didn't know where to start, what to say, or if I would sound too desperate and needy to be taken seriously. I didn't want to get across as if I was begging for something so networking started out as being very uncomfortable and confusing to me. How did people do it?
My first congress
In my last internship before graduating, I worked in a trading company. As I was getting my bachelors in International Relations, I figured that working with import and export would marry well with the knowledge I had accumulated for four years before that. As the company was really small, I was in charge of reaching out to business owners from various countries, all of whom had had some sort of contact with my manager. She went to many different fairs/congresses both nationally and internationally and the company mainly specialized in commodities. When one of those fairs took place near us, she said we should all be there to watch, talk and bring in new leads. Feel free to picture a 20-year-old freaking out in the expo center's bathroom trying to calm down and think about what to say to possible future clients (?!).
It's also valid to point out that I look much younger than I actually am so being taken seriously was an issue for me. I was accompanied by an even shier coworker so I felt I should be the one approaching the stands. I tried to put together the best sales pitch I could think of and got to talking. I decided that, instead of getting someone to want to sign a contract with me, my mission was to get to know the other businesses there and then get them to visit our company's stand so they could talk directly to my manager, who was much more persuasive than me and my coworker together.
And from that 2-day fair/congress I got a grand total of 9 or 10 leads and one company interested in signing a contract to export their goods to Russia.
That, up until the last few years, had been one of my biggest professional accomplishments. One of my mentors in life, my uncle, said that was because I had a good sales approach and that I should try to grow that skill. Me? Good at sales? Who knew!?
After graduating and saying goodbye to that internship, some university friends and I went to an international trade convention to basically try to get any junior job position we could, which was a huge fail for all of us. But why? Wasn't I good at it?
What I was actually good at
I worked in a few different places ever since; sales and otherwise. I worked at a makeup counter in a big mall in my hometown and as a sales assistant in a huge South American delivery startup, which lead me to pursue other positions I was more comfortable in. But what about having a good sales approach? To this day, I don't know if that was true or not, but I got to learn more about myself.
What I found out is that I'm a good communicator when I actually understand and am interested in the topic. I liked the trading company because it reflected what I had been learning at school. I liked selling make-up because I understood what each product was meant for and liked using them. I was a good sales assistant because I was super excited to be in a tech start-up and learn as much as I could about their business model. So for me, it's not that I'm a good salesperson, per se, but I think I can get the emotion across, and people buy into that, much more than they buy into a simple product or service.
What does that have to do with networking?
The way I see networking is that is a personal sales game as much as it is about connection. And we just can't connect with everything or everybody, right? As we get to know the industry we are in or want to go into, we discover some bigger points of interest or develop skills we can later use in junction with other previous interests. Those are the parts that make us excited to be there in the first place
In order to truly network, you must connect with other people. You do that by sharing your authentic interests and getting your emotions across. See how people connect with it and adapt as you learn. Much easier said than done, but doable!
How do you see networking? Does my thinking make sense to you? Tell me below in the comments!
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