• The ice breaker
• Get to know you better
• Graceful exit
So you attend a networking event, you make eye contact with someone you want to meet; you approach them and introduce yourself and now what?
Having a few powerful, open-ended ice breaker questions should certainly do the trick. For example:
"So John, what do you do?"
Now people love talking about themselves and their business so the idea here is to get them started talking, and most people also love to hear the sound of their own voice!
"So John, what brings you here today?"
Now notice on these sample ice breaker questions I've repeated the person's name.
Firstly, by doing this it will help burn that person's name into my mind so I don't forget it.
Secondly, people love the sound of their name - so don't be afraid to use it throughout your conversation
*Getting to know you better
Depending on the results of the ice breaker questions you should by now be able to determine whether or not it makes sense to get to know this person better.
If not, simply skip this phase and go to what I call the graceful exit (More on this later.)
But if you do see a connection, try some of these again open-ended, getting to know you better, questions:
How did you get into that business?
What is success for you and your business?
What's new in your industry?
You can use one or two of these questions, or more if the situation permits.
However, be careful here not to dominate someone's time as the idea is to network not monopolise and possibly alienate someone!
* The Graceful Exit
It's vastly important how you leave a conversation - as this is the last impression you make on that person. We're not looking to create any animosity; the key is to exit gracefully.
A major difference between the types of questions or statements you make in this phase as opposed to the previous two phases is that now you shift to using close-ended ones. For example:
Introduce the person to someone else that may be of interest to them and then politely excuse yourself.
Now they exchange pleasantries and you immediately exit the conversation by saying something like,
"Well you two probably have a lot to talk about."
"It's been great meeting you John, I hope to see you at the next meeting."
More next time, until then, I hope your small talk brings you continued success!
It's vastly important how you leave a conversation - as this is the last impression you make on that person. We're not looking to create any animosity; the key is to exit gracefully.
A major difference between the types of questions or statements you make in this phase as opposed to the previous two phases is that now you shift to using close-ended ones. For example:
Introduce the person to someone else that may be of interest to them and then politely excuse yourself.
Now they exchange pleasantries and you immediately exit the conversation by saying something like,
"Well you two probably have a lot to talk about."
"It's been great meeting you John, I hope to see you at the next meeting."
More next time, until then, I hope your small talk brings you continued success!
Malcolm
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