I thought networking was about making people remember you. I may have had the whole thing backwards.
I am historically bad at networking. Not regular bad. The kind of bad where I can walk into a room with 500 interesting people, have three conversations, decide I’ve probably done enough human interaction for the evening and calculate how early I can leave without anyone noticing.
People are usually surprised when I say that because I basically speak and think, for a living. I speak from stages. I host a podcast where my entire job is talking to interesting people. I run a company with thousands of people in it. I write this newsletter every week, which is essentially me having a conversation with several thousand people who fortunately can’t interrupt me.
Talking has never really been my problem. Put me across the table from someone interesting, and I can talk to them for two hours without noticing that everyone else has gone home and the restaurant staff is stacking chairs around us as a fairly obvious hint.
The problem is I love deep conversations, and I absolutely hate surface ones. And networking, at least the way we usually do it, feels like the Olympics of surface conversation. Put a name tag on me, hand me a drink and tell me to “work the room,” and apparently I forget how humans interact.
Where are you from? What do you do? How long have you been doing it? Are you enjoying the conference? How about that aggressively air-conditioned ballroom? Four minutes later, one of us spots someone over the other person’s shoulder; we perform the ceremonial “great meeting you,” and walk away remembering almost nothing about each other.
For years I assumed this meant I was bad at networking. Lately I’ve started wondering if maybe meeting lots of people was never the point. Maybe the goal isn’t to make yourself memorable. Maybe it’s to make the person you’re talking to feel memorable.
That’s a very different assignment, and frankly one I’m considerably better at.
Ask the question you actually want answered
Most networking questions are designed to keep a conversation alive. I think better questions are designed to find out whether there’s a conversation worth having.
There’s nothing wrong with asking someone what they do or where they’re from. You have to start somewhere, and opening with “Tell me about your relationship with your father” tends to create unnecessary problems around the shrimp cocktail. But once you get through the basics, ask something you actually want to know. Not a clever networking question you memorized on the plane. Something their answer made you curious about.
If someone tells me they’ve been selling real estate for 20 years, I’m probably not that interested in how many houses they sold last year. I might ask what’s harder now than it was 20 years ago. If somebody built a huge company, I want to know about the period when it almost didn’t work. If someone changed careers at 50, I want to know what finally made them do it. If they tell me they’re having their best year ever, I’m probably curious about the crappy year that came before it.
People change when you ask them something they haven’t answered 15 times already. There’s usually a little pause. They stop reciting and start thinking. The polished conference answer disappears, and an actual person shows up.
That’s when networking stops feeling like networking to me.
And here’s the part I think I had backwards for years. I used to think asking a great question made the person asking it more interesting. Maybe. But that’s not really why it works. A great question tells the other person, I’m actually listening to you. In a room full of people waiting for their turn to talk, that’s surprisingly rare.
Find the brisket
Every interesting person has something about them that isn’t on their name tag. Find that.
You might meet a woman who has built a ridiculously successful real estate business. She has hundreds of transactions, a big team, awards, all the usual evidence that she’s very good at what she does. But 10 minutes into the conversation, you discover what she really wants to talk about is brisket.
And I mean really talk about brisket.
She has three smokers. She gets up at 3:30 a.m. to check temperatures. She has strong opinions about post oak versus hickory and talks about bark formation with considerably more enthusiasm than she talks about her last $4 million listing. Somewhere along the way she became an amazing Realtor, but you get the distinct impression that if brisket ever develops a better compensation model, her license is going inactive on Tuesday.
I’m going to remember her.
Not because she sold a lot of houses. There are probably 50 people in that ballroom who sold a lot of houses. I’m going to remember her because she’s the brisket woman.
We tend to introduce ourselves through our professions because professions are convenient. “I’m a Realtor.” “I’m a lender.” “I own a brokerage.” Those things tell me what box to put you in, but they don’t tell me much about you. There are thousands of Realtors. There’s only one Realtor I met last night who can explain why wrapping a brisket too early is basically a crime against beef.
The interesting stuff is almost always one layer down.
Kids. Old cars. Boxing. A terrible golf obsession. The band somebody has seen 34 times. The book they can’t stop talking about. The weird hobby their spouse wishes they’d never discovered. The place they grew up. The thing they’d probably be doing if their current career disappeared tomorrow.
That’s where people stop being contacts and start becoming people.
And this is important: don’t go digging for the brisket because some networking book told you personal details increase conversion. That’s creepy. People can feel when curiosity is really just prospecting wearing a nicer shirt.
That tends to work better.
Leave with something to do
I think this is where networking usually dies. You meet somebody. You have a genuinely great conversation. You exchange numbers. Maybe you connect on LinkedIn. Then you both say, “We should definitely stay in touch.”
And neither of you ever speaks again. Apparently “stay in touch” is adult language for “I enjoyed these 17 minutes and wish you well in all future endeavors.”
I’ve started thinking a good conversation should leave me with something to do. Not something I need from them. Something I can do for them.
Maybe they mention their daughter is going to college in a city I know well. I can send them the restaurant she needs to try. Maybe they’re struggling with recruiting and I know someone who is unusually good at it. I can make an introduction. Maybe they mention a book, a problem, a trip, a hobby, a piece of software, a person they want to meet.
Sometimes it’s tiny. Tiny is good.
Because the point isn’t to impress them with your vast network and extraordinary generosity. The point is that the next morning, when everyone else is sending some version of “Great meeting you last night,” you can send something that proves you actually remember meeting them.
- “Here’s that restaurant I told you about.”
- “I thought about your recruiting problem. You should talk to Sarah.”
- “I saw this and immediately thought about your Bronco project.”
Or, obviously:
- “I found that brisket thermometer we were talking about.”
That message does something “great meeting you” never can.
It tells them they were memorable.
Then do the part everyone forgets
This is where the business eventually comes in. Put them in your database. I know. Deeply romantic.
But relationships disappear when we rely on our brains to maintain them. We meet someone interesting, fully intend to stay connected, go home, unpack, return 63 emails, deal with whatever caught fire while we were gone, and six months later vaguely recognize their face on LinkedIn.
Make a note about what you actually talked about. Connect somewhere appropriate. Reach out occasionally when you have a reason. If you told them you’d introduce them to someone, actually make the introduction. If they told you their daughter was starting college, ask six months later how she likes it.
That’s not a follow-up campaign. It’s remembering people.
And maybe that’s the thing I’ve misunderstood about networking all these years. I thought the good networkers were the people who could walk into a room and make everyone remember them. Big personality. Great story. Firm handshake. Seventy-five new contacts before dessert.
Maybe some are. But I think the people who are really good at this do something quieter.
They remember everyone else.
They remember your kid went to college. They remember the company you were trying to build. They remember the problem you were wrestling with. They remember the stupid old Bronco in your garage and that you were supposed to get it running by summer.
They remember the brisket.
I’m probably still going to be terrible at working a room. At the next conference, somebody will meet 75 people while I’m still talking to the second one. They’ll have more business cards, more selfies, and considerably better knowledge of where everyone in the ballroom is from.
I’m okay with that. Give me three good conversations. And tomorrow, I’ll try to remember the three people who had them with me.
Keith Robinson is President, Strategy for NextHome, Inc.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.
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