Are you prepared for your networking this week?

It’s Monday, it’s 8am and it’s……..

Ok, so most of you are too young to shout “Crackerjack” at that (and I think that was on Friday afternoons, not very early Monday mornings in any case). But how about putting some preparation into your networking this week?

Something I wrote previously was that everything in networking is about what you do after the event, but actually, to be more accurate, a lot of your success in networking comes from what we do before the event too.

Networking can easily be seen as a play in three acts, our preparation, what we do during the event and our follow up. Let’s think about Act 1 in this article.

Firstly, you will probably be asked to give a 60 or 40 second introduction, make sure you have it prepared, it is far too important to just wing it. I have some templates which I use with my clients, and I put one of them out, for free, on Instagram a few days ago, along with notes on what to say. You can get it right here — https://www.instagram.com/p/COiG9E0FFVB/

Prepare and practise your introduction. Rehearse it to an empty room if necessary. Crucially, time yourself using the timer app on your ‘phone. If the organiser says 40 or 60 seconds, stick to it. It is significantly better to finish within time than to be cut off, or try to…