I haven’t got the time. This is a objection I occasionally get from clients when we are discussing the value of networking as a tool to grow their business. My reply to this is always the same “its never about time, its about your willingness to change your current results”.
Who Is Responsible?
In an effort to be more productive we will look to manage time more effectively and this is our challenge as you cannot manage time, you can only manage yourself. Time will continue no matter what you do, so how can it possibly be managed? If you spent 30 minutes organising your networking for the week or twiddling your thumbs, the 30 minutes passed anyway. In those 30 minutes you managed yourself not time.
This is a really important distinction when you are looking to “be more productive” or to “have more time”. There are many reasons why we feel we run out of time and they are all down to how we perform and what we give our attention to. Do we have a plan of what we want to accomplish for the day, week, month or the year? How many things do we say yes to? Do we struggle to say no? Have we just gotten into habits of working that no longer serve us? Are we scared of change? Are the systems we use inefficient? All of these things are to do with ourselves and our living and working environment and not about time. When we say we haven’t got time we are giving up responsibility or not taking ownership of what we need to do to give attention to the things that matter for us.
What Can You Do?
A good exercise I do with my clients is an networking review. We look at patterns of behaviours around their weekly networking activity and review what serves them and what doesn’t. We look at such things as;
- Who are they networking with?
- Do these people have the same target market clients as them?
- What are they saying when they go networking?
- Do they go networking alone or do they take a referral source with them?
- What results are they getting from their networking?
- Can they become a person of influence in their networking groups?
Mostly the networking activities that don’t serve them are automatic behaviours and ways of working that have become routine over time. Once we have identified these patterns we work on changing them to become more aligned with the results they desire.
If you need better networking results make sure you focus on your networking activities and not trying to manage time. Unless you have a TARDIS then you will be on a loser with that one!
If you could change one networking behaviour to help you become more productive, what would it be?
I’ll offer a free no obligation 30 minute networking review call for the first ten people who respond to this post on LinkedIn.
More tips?
If you enjoyed this blog and would like to how to get the most from your networking then you can download my free ebook “47 Networking nuggets” by clicking on the link below.