You may (hopefully) have noticed that you have two ears and just one mouth. There may be many reasons for this – and many more suggestions! When networking, it is important to use these body parts in proportion.

Listening Effectively

By this I mean that the most important part of networking is to listen – attentively and effectively.

There is a phrase that really sums this up – active listening. Wikepedia describes active listening as “a structured way of listening and responding to others. It focuses attention on the speaker”. The reason that this is so important in networking all comes back to the central fundamental of networking – building relationships. To build a relationship, it is important to pay attention to other people.

Here are a few tips on active listening:

• Make a conscious effort to hear not only the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, try and understand the total message being sent. 
• Do not allow yourself to become distracted by what else may be going on around you, lose focus on what the other person is saying or begin to form what you are going to say when the other person stops speaking.
• Let the other person know that you are listening by nodding or making the “uh huhs”. (Have you ever spoken to someone and had no idea if they were listening? Frustrating, isn’t it?)
• Respond in a way that will help the other person to keep talking and give you all of the information that you need.

Like virtually any skill, active and effective listening takes time – but it is worth it. If you have been involved with the IWIB Power Networking Events (and if you haven’t, it is worth considering at www.iwib.com.au) then you will understand how important this is. When you have 60 minutes to network with 12 people and get enough information to know where to spend your “free hour”, then you need to listen very carefully and not be distracted by the frenetic atmosphere.

Speaking Efficiently

Once you have listened actively to the person you have met, the next step is to speak efficiently. By this I mean introduce yourself succinctly and in as interesting a way as possible.

You should have an “elevator introduction” for your business. If you were in a lift with someone and they asked you “What do you do?”, could you answer that before the lift stopped?

Based on all of the wonderful listening that you have done, you should be able to ask some great questions of your networking partner and, if appropriate and possible, introduce products or services of your own that would provide synergy with them. This is not the time to sell directly to them but the time to introduce opportunities for further collaboration, joint ventures or introductions to others.

 Why bother?

I know that some of you will be thinking that this all seems a great way to develop your skills although maybe some of you are not convinced it is worthwhile. We are surrounded with people and information all of the time. The question that you should really ask yourself is “What can I do to stand out from the crowd?” These are some simple skills to develop that will help you to do just that.

People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. Applied to networking this really means that they do not care how great your product or service is until you have showed an interest in what they do and what you may be able to do to help them. Investing some time to develop these skills in the short term will have a great impact on your return on investment of time and money spent networking.