“Business Networking and Sex (Not What You Think)” by Ivan Misner, Ph.D., Hazel Walker, and Frank De Raffele offers three experts’ perspectives on issues that rise in networking situations and how to learn from both sexes, male and female.

Over a four-year period, these experts surveyed more than 12,000 businesspeople all over the world focusing on 25 specific, simple questions. It’s the, “He Says, She Says,” of battle of the sexes and how males and females approach different networking situations. Are men and women that different or are we pretty similar?

“91% of men & women say networking played an integral part of their success.”

This book is a definite must read for anyone who wants to grow and maintain their business relationships. Understanding both genders will advance your networking skills and extinguish the stresses of working with the opposite sex. Once read, you’ll want to continue passing along to friends and associates to be read and reread by all.

To find out more, click here: “Business Networking and Sex (Not What You Think)”

Belief:  People have a hard time believing what they don’t see.  Whether you are talking religion or buying a new car, whether the idea is ethereal or concrete you must be able to create a picture in peoples mind that they can see and touch (at least in their mind) for them to believe in it or about it.  Religions have done this since the dawn of time with symbolism that is emerged in stories that allow people to get their head around the power of God. 

Understanding:  Stories that people can visualize themselves engaged in, playing a role in or even have had happen to them are another way to engage visually.  We see ourselves playing in the movie that a sales person or a marketer has created and suddenly are stimulated to take action.  Millions of “Life Alert” lanyards were sold when sons and daughters visualized their parents lying on the ground saying “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”.  We understood the emotional pain as well as the functionality of the product, we understood the “why to buy” in 30 seconds from one picture.

Non-Verbal:  97% of human communication is non verbal.  The conversation that happens between the real conversation is what we need to understand.  If we are not face to face then we must know how to make our self present and real so we can make that conversation as “real” to them as we can in a very short amount of time.

Relationship:  People have a hard time understanding a system with a conversation.  They have a hard time understanding the relationship between two things without seeing them.  The right analogy that makes a word picture in their mind or a conversation that makes it real in the mind of the prospect can in seconds show the complicated relationship that would have taken hours to explain in a linear fashion.

If you have a complicated value proposition that many people take a lot of time to command then use pictures in the mind of who you are talking to in order to get them to understand what you are really doing.

We rise to the occasion and succeed where many others seem to struggle.  I find fascinating the stories of immigrants who become millionaires and bring to the US and care for the rest of their families.  I enjoy hearing of parents with handicapped children becoming top producers in sales and business to rise to the financial challenge of caring for a gifted child or a billionaire that has survived one and two bankruptcies, etc. 

My point is that we all have in us an extra gear. An extra muscle or power we can tap into at any time that lies dormant in most of us because we really don’t have to access it. It is the same power that turns normal mothers into super heroes of strength and stamina to save small children. That makes entrepreneurs and authors not need sleep or athletes press the limits of what is possible for their body. 

On some level they have decided they “have to.” My question to you is what do you “have to” do?   What do you have to do to keep your children safe?  What do you have to do to keep a roof over your head? 

Do you have “have to” standards for being healthy, happy or even successful?  Do you want to be successful as much as you want to breathe? Or are you waiting for some tragedy or scare or circumstance to call up your greatness?

Here is my challenge to you if you are reading my words…Why don’t you use this power of “have to” to enable you to reach your potential? 

Technology cannot architect a relationship. “Where do we live and what do we live for?” to paraphrase Thoreau.  Are we here for texts, e-mails, blogs and their replies? Or are we here to use these mediums or media to facilitate the handshakes, the hugs, the high –fives and the connectivity that comes from sharing in society?

In my world, I build relationships between companies and I am more than happy to create content, connection and response through the new media and use these tools to create “relationships” but I am not fooled by the saying “follows are friends” or even customers.  Are you?

Use the tools!  But understand their place and where they stand in your business and your life.  This morning I got in a car accident. It took 2 ½ hours out of my day but I made friends with the guy that hit me and exchanged information with the people that I hit.  We laughed, made fun of how long the cops took get there and how hungry we were.  What was so illuminating to me is that I had a better relationship with these people than I do with 80% of the people who follow me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and that is because we had an accident for us to spend time with each other.

In the end, when you are sitting on your death bed, I doubt you are going to think about your last post.  Use technology as a tool to become more social, not confuse it by behaving the opposite.

The chapter is about Gratitude. Gratitude is giving thanks. It is amazing to me, the many things there are to be thankful for, if only we look for them. How many times do we focus on the one or two things that are going wrong versus the hundreds of beautiful things that make us happy?

As I went for a long walk on Sunday, I counted over 100 things to be thankful for. Wonderful things are all around us, if we focus on the wonderful things. And if we focus on gratitude more greatness comes to us. Without gratitude, we disconnect ourselves from the power to receive more.

My challenge to you this week is to start your everyday with reflection of what you are thankful for. Start a gratitude journal. This practice will change your life.

Cheers,
Nikki

Work on your culture more than you work on your strategy. Create an organization where ideas thrive and where failure is a badge of courage rather than a black mark on your reputation. Allow new ideas to develop and flourish and be celebrated as well as enjoying failure. Run controlled business experiments where there is an acceptable loss or failure. Try things that are on gut or hunch because of the style and trends that you “feel” are moving in the right direction for the initiative.

Create a “Creative Culture” or even a “skunk works” division of your company that can and does fail because it is their job. I have been speaking a lot recently to West Coast and East Coast technology executives and the most important reason they feel that 74% of the Venture Capital in the US raised goes to Silicon Valley rather than all the other hotbeds of technology across the US, is the culture of the valley celebrates failure as well as innovation. 

I am not telling you to spend willy-nilly money on any new idea that marketing brings you. I am telling you that you should have a line item in the P & L to run the experiment. If you don’t, the competition that has this type of culture will be beating you soon.

Over the years we have created jobs for about 25 people and with the businesses that we have worked with directly, I would conservatively say we have helped create 100, if not 200 jobs.  When it comes to the economic impact and job creation that has resulted from what we do as member businesses at Rainmakers I would guess that in the last decade we have created well over 1000 jobs together.

Since I have been working with Dan Lacy at Dynasty Builders I have personally seen him help businesses grow profit by 20, 30 and even 100 percent.  Guess what his clients do?  They create jobs!  In fact, we have hired a new employee just 3 months ago that has helped grow my Stringcan business 300% and we will be hiring a couple more people by the end of the year.

We could not have done that without profit and understanding the role that it plays in our business life.  On April 18th you have a chance to change your “Profit Paradigm.”  To change the way you think about profit.  I think you have a chance to make profit “personal.”  You could be the next person that creates a job.  You have as chance to build your business and create a new relationship of value.  A chance to find a person that you can provide a once in a lifetime opportunity to and you can gain x-factor multiplier you need for your business because you made one simple change in the way you think.

You changed your profit paradigm.  You moved it from 6 letter obscenity to the lifeblood of your organization.

We hope you’ll join us on April 18th.  Register here 

For those of you who are already in leadership within this awesome organization of people who “Pay It Forward,” we hope this short message inspires you to leverage Rainmakers to a higher level and for those of you who are not yet plugged in to leadership, we hope this message inspires you to jump in!

Amongst many, here are five things that Leaders in Rainmakers create for themselves:

1. Credibility 

Perception is reality. How do you show up to others? Are you being recognized at events? How about leveraging the opportunity to publicly speak? Or leading small groups during Rainmakers activities? All of these things are available to help build your credibility among your peers.

2. Recruiting strategic partners versus transactional business 

Once you are plugged into a leadership role, we are recruiting for you specifically. You let us know who you need to meet and we are bringing them to an event and introducing them to you as a leader in the organization.

3. Commitment to frequency and universe  

When you are in Leadership at a particular Rainmakers event, you are seen at the same place over and over for frequent touch of those you have already met. Plus, you grow your personal database each month with the guests who attend your event.

4.  Help and get helped 

When you are in Leadership at Rainmakers, you have a home base, your event, to help your strategic partners and for them to help you. What does this look like? You bring guests for each other to introduce face to face.

5.  Leverage

Leaders know how to leverage time. Being in leadership for an event allows you regularity in leveraging your time to touch multiple people at once and to make new contacts. This position allows and teaches you to consolidate many meetings into the event time.

Take the lead, and see GREAT results!

Cheers, 

Nikki

Stephanie says, “Getting More is Giving More.” Stephanie has put out a challenge to all Rainmakers to create one opportunity each day for someone else. Networking is so much more than a place to give referrals.

In Rainmakers, networking is our opportunity to build relationships, share ideas, endorse each other, learn from each other, have accountability, raise the bar for our own standards, etc.  

Find ways that you can “pay it forward” and watch how your leadership rubs off on others. 

Cheers,

Nikki

It occurred to me how many times in the last 6 months I was having conversations about Angie’s List, Craigslist, bloggers, etc. and how they single handledly effect the sales of organizations.  I think the conversation is shifting from whether social and online strategies really work to are you or are you not leveraging this very powerful medium to grow your business.

The truth is that if you do not have a social media marketing strategy you are “Anti-Social” as a business.  You are not joining a conversation already being  had online about your business and therefore you are missing opportunities you could have to create new clients.

We were in Louisville and going through Pizza Restaurants and only going to the ones that were reviewed and rated online.  This is no different than people using Angie’s List to select a contractor or asking on Facebook what is the best new restaurant to take your significant other.  The conversation is happening and if you don’t respond to the people engaging or even let them know how to talk to you, your business is anti-social.

The best news about becoming a socially-engaged business is if you do a great job, that will come out.  If you work at it you can effectively drive you own destiny and it is directly measurable compared to traditional mass media.

Now go be social.