Friday, October 16, 2009

Helping Others First

It never ceases to amaze me how some people in the world view networking. One of the best things you can do for yourself to ensure that YOU are successful is to help others first and to also constantly evaluate yourself on how others perceive you. Self-evaluation is a powerful exercise.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are so focused on their own needs that they either do not take the time or do not care what others think. They're too busy hitting THEIR goals.

Here are two recent examples from my own experiences. The first is a person who started a new company. He's out there working his tail off to get new contacts and new business: FOR HIMSELF. He's accepting new business for anything and everything, rather than focusing on a specific niche in his new industry. Basically he's willing to 'step on toes' of former referral partners because he needs the money. Had he specialized in a given niche he would have found that those referral partners would have been happy to help him by giving him referrals with the hopes he would return the favor. Greed won out instead.

In the second example, a member of a referral group asked everyone in his chapter to provide him with 2 referrals in the next month so he could reach HIS monthly sales goals. Yet he had generated 6 referrals to the rest of the group over eight months. If he had been a consistent contributor helping everyone throughout the year in his group he probably would have already met his sales goal without specifically making this plea.

The lessons to be learned in these two examples are that you should not make requests for others to help you when you've offered little help to them. You should also be considerate of your referral network and not compete against them for the same business. Your short term sales will result in a long term failure. If you're perceived as selfish, any potential referrals will dry up for you.