Kissing frogs

My guest on yesterday’s free teleseminar from The Accidental Salesman® was Claude Bonte, CEO and founder of Spyda VIP Network and author of ‘Kissing Frogs’, a book about improving the results of networking.

Claude gave us a clear message that in his view, the biggest mistake people make is to treat networking as a process rather than spending time developing relationships. He suggests we should focus on people we would be happy to spend time with, whether there was any business to be had or not. Its Claude’s belief that if you focus on people you would be happy to meet socially and go the extra mile for, then provided the feeling is mutual a much better quality of business connection will result.

Claude gave a lot of top tips including being generally interested in the people you talk to and being a time miser when it comes to deciding whom you would like to follow up with.

One of the tips that I had not really heard before was to turn up early to networking events. Claude told us stories about great and profitable relationships that came from turning up half an hour before the event was due to start.

It was interesting to hear a different view from someone in the world of networking. In fact I got the impression from Claude that the term ‘networking’ is half the problem. I am sure he would prefer to call it nice people enjoying each other’s company and helping one another out. Sounds good but I am not sure if it will catch on!