Today, I had the opportunity to interview business coach extraordinaire, Lorraine Lane. I have known Lorraine for several years. She can show you how to leverage your current business efforts without having to spend more time or dollars to do it.
Lorraine is also Author of the great book, Business-Building Referrals - Play Your A-Game and Become A Networking Super Star. I highly recommend it.
I asked Lorraine if I could interview her for you and she agreed.
This free interview will help you also leverage your career through the long lost art of referrals and networking.
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Networking Interview Snippets and Highlights
You only have so much time in the day; you can only do so many things in the 10 or 12 hours that you probably devote to your business. How do you grow it past that?
For those of you that are sitting there saying, “I’m in the land of corporate America, I work for a living, I get a paycheck. What does this mean to me?”
Well, here’s a great way that you can get leverage today on your next career opportunity, getting a raise, or securing that big contract for your company, which probably could result in a huge bonus for you. So I think hopefully, we’ve peaked your interest, that there’s going to be enough value for you here today and we’re going to deliver on that.
If you were to sit down with somebody tomorrow; say myself, and you were going to coach me or help me, where would we start assessing where I am and where I want to go?
Lorraine: Well, I have a list of 100 questions that I ask people so that I can get a read on what you’ve done, where you’ve been, where you want to go, and those questions allow us to have that conversation. So it just helps the structure of our conversation. From that conversation, I’ll know what you are willing to do, what you’re not willing to do, what you’ve tried, what you want to do with your business. So that’s where I start.
From that, we can talk about as your coach, what am I going to be helping you with and what direction we’re going to go in. When I’m working with my clients, I want to be able to show that we’ve made progress.
Shane: What kind of advice do you give a person that just has the heart pounding, the cold sweat, and they can barely walk through the door of anything remotely labeled a conference, networking event, or luncheon. How do you coach that person?
Lorraine: Okay, that was me when I was walking into a networking event. So what I did and what I advise people, who are my clients, who detest networking is I would make up my mind that I would find the person in the group who was more uncomfortable than I. So then it took attention off myself and I would look around the room for the person who was more uncomfortable, walk up to that person and start talking. My goal was to make them comfortable.
Shane: I really implore you to think about how can you give back and how can you give unselfishly? How can you just go out and seek to help somebody else. It always comes back in huge dividends.
Is it better to network in person or online?
I think for the older timers, you’ve got to stop resisting because that’s how people are communicating. So at some level, find your comfort level or push against your comfort zone and get with it, at some level.
For the younger people, I think if you’re so consumed with your fingers working the keyboard, you’re missing something with the personal engagement with people. So I think there needs to be some kind of a balance. If you’re all taken up in your technology, you’re missing that human connection.
Shane: So at the end of the day, how would you sum up becoming a better referral person or a better networker? What’s the ROI? ‘
Lorraine: I think you need to ask yourself, if you’re going to networking events, you know, four or five times a week, why? What is the purpose?
I’ve asked a couple of my clients that and it’s their friends; so they’re doing it for social connections and it has no effect on their business, so I ask the question: Are you doing this because you think it’s building your business or because if you didn’t do this you’d have no friends?
So you’ve got to answer that question.
If you’re doing it because it’s a social thing and you’re doing it during business hours, when does business get done?
Don’t miss the great stories along with Lorraine’s secret to her start located at the 10 minute and 35 second mark of the interview.
You can also download the interview to your computer. Right-click the button on "Play Interview"
and choose the "Save As" option to save it and then play it with your favourite media player.
Make sure to leave a comment with any questions or feedback that you have.
Domo Arigato.
