Who's Story Is It Anyway?

Do you remember your first date?

Did the other person talk about themselves all the time - how great they are, how they feel, what they think, what tricks they'd taught their pet, where they live, what an amazing holiday they went on last summer, them, them, them, yawn, yawn, yawn and so on? And you thought, 'Stop! Enough!!'

How was the 2nd date? There wasn't one?! What a surprise...

Following on from the last few blog posts, I want you to consider how you communicate when networking or selling your service/product? Do you, even inadvertently, end up talking about yourself and your services to the point when you leave you can't even remember what the other person said/did or why they were there?

It's easy to do. When nervous or in a new environment one safety mechanism is to switch into story telling mode - our story; what I call our 'yada, 'yada, yada'.

Feeling special is a basic human need. So how special do you think listening to you, you, you all night makes someone else feel? And to be more specific, is the 'yada, yada, yada' approach more, or less likely to result in a new quality contact, lead or sale?

A better approach to have when networking is the 'I want to find out about you, you, you'.

During this week's blog posts I'll be looking at how you can develop this more successful approach and implement it in your real life networking situations.

Wishing you a great week ahead.