Michelle gets into what to do when your networking momentum has stalled - not because the other person isn't interested, but because there's just no natural reason to keep showing up in each other's lives.
You've had the good conversations. You've met the right people. So why does it feel like you're screaming into the void every time you try to follow up?
Michelle gets into what to do when your networking momentum has stalled - not because the other person isn't interested, but because there's just no natural reason to keep showing up in each other's lives. The fix isn't more follow-up emails. It's giving yourself a job. Michelle walks through two practical strategies that put you on the inside instead of waiting on the outside for someone else to create the opening.
Resources
If you're drawn to relationship marketing but can't quite picture what it looks like in practice: the daily habits, the time commitment, which metrics you should be tracking to know if it's working -this free live training is for you. Michelle Warner is opening the books and walking you through a real day (and a real month) in her almost social media-free relationship marketing practice, so you can see exactly what it looks like behind the scenes. This is for people who are relationship marketing-curious and are ready to see the workflow in action to understand what it would look like in their business.
Join her live on April 27th at 2pm ET. Register free at the link below. Registration Link: https://themichellewarne.kit.com/relationshipmarketing
Hi, I'm Michelle Warner and I'm a business designer and strategist, and in the 15 plus years I've done this work, I've noticed the same trend everywhere. Business owners are falling into the trap of centering strategies first when they need to be centering sequence, because the reality is the steps you take in your business and the order in which you take them is more important than how well you implement any single strategy. So on this show, my goal is to fix that by helping you find and trust your own sequence of actions rather than blindly following someone else's strategy.
Welcome to Sequence Over Strategy. And today we're going to be talking about momentum, especially in networking, well specifically in networking and more specifically like what to do when you have it and you've gotten started, but it's proving a little hard to keep holding on to that momentum and to build on it. So maybe you've had conversations with folks, they feel like they're going somewhere and then they've stalled and the person was someone who looked like they wanted to collaborate.
We talk a lot about if they're not showing any collaboration vibes, drop them immediately or after one or two attempts. But if this is someone who's been engaging in good faith and then just it wasn't the right time or nothing has happened quite yet because maybe they weren't in a position to make anything happen for you quite yet, then what can we do? What makes sense to build some of that momentum that doesn't drive you into just kind of endless rounds of bad follow-up conversations?
When Momentum Stalls
So here's kind of the situation I'm describing. If you know the relationship marketing world and my intentional networking world, you will know the term ideal connection avatar. And that just means the person who you are trying to connect with.
What is the networking goal? Who fits the profile of that goal? So you've put the work in on that ideal connection avatar.
You know who you're trying to build relationships with, or you're at least 80% of the way there, like you have some clarity. And that's good enough. You're at that place.
You don't have to be at 100% with who your ideal connection avatar is. Maybe you're still sussing that out. But since you're at about 80% or you're 100% and you're super clear on it, so you've had those real conversations with people who want to help you, who see what you're doing, who are excited about what you do.
And then like I said above, it just sort of stalls. And again, this isn't because it's not people engaging in good faith. That's a separate category that we talk about.
If people are just not giving you the time of day or they're not picking up what you're putting down in terms of collaborating, then you want to move on because you don't want to waste your time. But there are going to be times where you are having good conversations. They are interested and it just hasn't happened for some reason.
And so you're looking for a way to keep momentum going or to restart some new momentum and just get yourself in motion to meet some new people, to keep in touch with the people that you have met and keep going, essentially. So this is a place where we want to look at a different strategy that you can take on instead of just doing the same old thing. How can you do something that helps you maintain this momentum?
So that's what this episode is about. It's kind of two specific strategies for getting yourself back in motion. We want you to be proactive.
And proactive, I always say, like I started my career in athletics. So I'm always thinking about like, I want you on the offensive. I want you up on your toes when you're looking at it.
We don't want you heels back in a defensive posture. So we want you to be thinking proactive. And again, how can you continue to be really value forward and adding value into the world in not generic ways?
And when I mean not generic ways, I mean that you're not just endlessly like emailing these people and saying like, oh, here's a article I thought you might be interested in. No, that's not really what we're looking for. And here's the thing.
We're going to go over two strategies and they're both working around the same principle. Essentially, we're looking for ways that give you a reason to show up, essentially give yourself a job. And when you have that job, starting a conversation with these people or reigniting a conversation, it's easy.
The hard part is solved. Like the figuring out how you're going to reach out or why you're going to reach out or are they going to think you're weird? All that's taken care of when we kind of give you a job.
Before we get into it, I do want to note a lot of times I'm talking about like, oh, let's do a project, right? So if you're stalled, let's look at ways that if you have a podcast, you can start inviting these people to be guests. You know, maybe you write a white paper of some type, maybe you do a market research of some type as an excuse to reach out.
And that's one way of doing things. But in here, I'm going to be talking about some strategies that I don't talk about as often that are a little bit more specific and in one case ongoing in terms of giving yourself a job that is specifically aimed at this kind of lost momentum question. Because here's the deal.
When we're talking about stalled networking, a lot of times, again, we feel like the relationship just isn't there, that the other person isn't interested, blah, blah, blah. You know, I've said this a couple of times now, but I want to reiterate it because it's important. There's two types of stalled networking.
There is a stalled networking where the person who you reach out to is just not giving you anything. And they're not giving you any kind of indicators that they are interested in collaboration. That's something to pay attention to.
And those are people, frankly, who we don't want to spend a lot of time with because you would have to change their heart and mind. But there's another type of person where there's just no natural reason to continue to be around each other. And so even though there's good momentum behind it, you're kind of trying to think about how can I build like thoughtful, meaningful contact over time.
Sometimes we do that through catch up emails. I talk about stop, drop, and thank you. All of those work, but also sometimes you need a little bit more.
And in those moments, I want you to give yourself a job, OK? And what I mean by that is finding a real value adding role that puts you in a natural ongoing contact with the people you're trying to build relationships with. Because when you do that, things get easier because you have a reason for what you're doing.
Strategy One: Organize Something
So let's stop talking about in theory what we're talking about. Let's get into a couple of examples. Strategy one, organize something.
This one is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of someone waiting for someone else to create a room that you want to be in, you can create the room yourself. And before you panic and think that I am suggesting that you now have to be the organizer of a big conference or something.
No, when I say organizer, I don't mean starting something big and formal like a formal networking group or a membership community or an event or anything that's paid. It's absolutely not paid. I'm talking about something like that's much, much more simple.
And I'm going to give you a couple of examples here, whether you're local or whether you're virtual. If you work with local businesses or if you're Ideal Connection avatars or other local business owners, which is common if you're like a corporate consultant in a larger city or a local agency, a coach within your immediate area. Those are common that you might be doing some things geographically.
And so when I talk about organize something, this could look like a quarterly breakfast or happy hour at a neighborhood restaurant. My corporate consultants who I work with on this love doing happy hours. That seems to be really successful.
Even in New York City, they'll put together a happy hour of, you know, a group of peers, a group of Ideal Connection avatars, and those are really popular. The breakfasts are popular too. Often, you know, we have small rotating gatherings at like a cafe once a month.
That tends to be a little bit more of a match if you're in a smaller town or if you're more of a, you know, not in like the corporate consultant category, but a different kind of service provider, like maybe you're a content writer or you do social media, things like that. Or you're, you know, running like a local CPA agency, right, where it's not within a bigger city, but you're inside of an ecosystem that like maybe back in the day would have been connected by like the Rotary Club, but things that aren't as popular right now. And so in those cases, I see like, you know, again, organizing simple gathering at a cafe once a month at the local coffee shop, or even if it's quarterly, just as like a small business support group.
So again, like if you're in the city and you're working more in corporate consulting and like B2B, I see, you know, fellow corporate consultants getting together for like those happy hours or those breakfasts. If you're in, you know, smaller to midsize towns and you're doing a little bit more of the service based stuff around that, I tend to see this around coffee shops. It doesn't actually matter.
I'm just giving you the examples of what I see the most, right? You can follow what your community wants, but it's almost too simple because often these are the people that you're talking to. If you're a corporate consultant, you are looking at the people who also work with your clients and you're trying to team up and find referrals for each other or when you'll fit into projects together.
That's normal. That's good. When you're in more of a content creator, social media person, more of a local economy is what I would call it, then the same thing is happening.
You're all talking to each other and trying to help each other navigate business. And that's why these gatherings make a lot of sense, because it can be awkward to do ongoing follow up with these folks. But it's really natural.
You're all working with the same people in some capacity or another. You're all thinking about the same things. You're all struggling with the same things.
And you can all commiserate with each other. So having an informal ongoing gathering is a really great way to strengthen those bonds. And this doesn't mean informal is the key, right?
This doesn't mean you're showing up doing a presentation or it's any kind of educational thing. It is literally you reaching out and being the organizer for people who probably crave connection and a place to vent and a place to just get together with their colleagues to talk about things for an hour and to commiserate and to problem solve for each other. That's extraordinarily valuable, but nobody takes the time to organize it.
So if you are the person who organizes it, you get a couple of things of value. Number one, all those people who it's a little awkward for you to continue to follow up with, they're right there for you and you'll have an opportunity. Number two, and more important, is that the organizer of these things always gets more benefit, or I shouldn't say always, but the vast majority of the time gets more benefit than the attendees because they all start to look at you with gratitude and they look at you as a little bit of a leader.
And when that happens, you are much more top of mind. You're not just one of the other people around. You are Katie who goes to the bother of organizing this stuff and that matters.
That really matters. And so that's what I'm talking about when you're giving yourself a job, if you're feeling a little stalled with these colleagues and you're not sure what to do, think about how you could organize something. And listen, if you are a person who works virtually, you can also do this.
I see it more locally. I'm not going to lie about that, but I've also seen it successfully done online where you can gather folks and put them in rooms, virtual rooms together and have these same conversations. It's missing that, you know, human in-person connection, but if you're groups who work online all the time, which includes me, I really value those moments where we get to talk about the business and we just get a minute where not on a client call, you're not doing this, you're not doing that.
You have a moment to connect with other folks, even though it happens to be virtual. Here's a great example that I'm a guest teacher. I talk about this often, right?
And I love to guest teach inside of programs. And there is one person who hosts me as a guest teacher and she goes through the hassle of once or twice a year holding a happy hour or, you know, a virtual get together. It's actually usually over the noon hour for all the guest teachers to get together.
And how wonderful is that? Like she recognizes that she brings in a lot of high quality guest teachers who would enjoy knowing each other. And so she gets us together socially a couple of times a year.
That's definitely not something that she has to do, but she understands that value and brings us together. I have done it before in my capacity with my business. I have looked at situations where maybe the economy is going a little wonky and we're not sure what to do or just something is showing me that people are a little unsure.
Since I'm like the business designer of the group, a lot of people, a lot of my friends and colleagues will start pinging me at the same time. If something is going on within the market where everyone all of a sudden is unsure of what's happening, you know, all of a sudden I get a lot of calls and texts and emails are like, hey, what do you think about this? And that's always a sign to me.
I'm like, let's get us all together and let's just talk it through. And then I become the organizer. And then inevitably out of that, they're reminded and, you know, ideas come forward and we start talking about doing things.
So putting yourself in an organizing position kind of makes you a super connector, but without having to be some kind of magical person. So if you're an introvert or if you're someone who doesn't love doing these things, it can be easier to put yourself behind the excuse of a job and go out and organize some of this stuff and you don't have to have the pressure of it being this absolutely perfect event because it's just a really casual get together. So that is one option that you have to build some momentum is to kind of, you know, build a support group.
Strategy Two: Give Yourself a Job at Events
The other strategy I have for you, and this is more if you're an events person. So we talked about if your ideal connection avatars are organized kind of in ecosystems that doing some organizing around that is a great idea. If you are a person who's looking out there and being like, oh, like events are a really great place for me, but I'm not really sure how to just show up in an event and meet people.
That's a little awkward or weird or whatever. I always say awkward and weird because it's awkward and weird to me. That's my personal lived experience.
Or it can just feel a little unclear. If you want to go to an event and you know that you want to meet some of the speakers or you know you want to do something there, just showing up and even if you show up with that intention, it can still feel a little bit unclear about how you can get that done. So in those situations, again, I want you to give yourself a job, either a literal job or a job that you assign yourself.
What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is you can give yourself a literal job by contacting the conference organizers and seeing if they need volunteers. Or in order to make sure that your volunteer position is going to get you in front of the people you want to get in front of, you could even volunteer and propose a job to them.
You could say, I would love to come to this event and provide this to you. And maybe that's a recap of a session or maybe it's a blog series of interviews with speakers. And then, by the way, you can meet the speakers.
You know, you can include the speakers that you're trying to meet in that. So you can either just volunteer for the event or get paid to show up at the event and do a job. And when you do that, you have a little bit of credibility.
Some people feel they have more credibility. They have more excuses to go up to people and introduce themselves if they're actually working at an event. Or again, you can invent a job and you can invent a job that makes sure it's going to put you in the track of the people that you want to meet.
So again, you can go and propose to the event organizers. I would love to do a blog interview series of the speakers. And let's see.
And I would love to give that to you to distribute after the event. Great. If they don't want you to do that, you can assign it to yourself and you can go to the event with the intention of having those experiences and having those conversations.
So all of those are available to you. When you start to think about events, you can go ahead and go in and think about what job can I give myself at this event so that it's inevitable that I run into the people I want to meet, as opposed to just hoping that it happens and potentially getting in a situation where maybe I'm not really sure what I should say or what I should do. And so, again, like this is something that I think about before I go to events because I'm an introvert, too.
And I always try to point out the moments where I'm an introvert, because I think it's helpful to let you know that, like, these are strategies that I use myself and that I use to set myself up for success. That old saying, like, what can I do to make my goals inevitable that they happen? And this is one of those things that you can do.
You can think through how can I assign myself a task that is going to make this inevitable rather than potentially putting myself in an awkward situation or in a situation where I'm just, like, not paid attention to.
The Takeaway
So when we look at the takeaway of all this in these two examples, if you're feeling stuck or if you're not sure how to start or if you feel like you need to kickstart something, you're not sure how to meet people in bunches, then, like, stop waiting and kind of start organizing. Give yourself a job, right?
If your network has stalled, then the answer isn't in, like, more follow-up emails because it's just going to continue to make you feel awkward. And instead, you're going to want to keep saying it. Give yourself a job of some kind so you have an organizing reason to be reaching out to folks and to be adding value in a unique way that they're not seeing all the time.
So be the person who organizes the quarterly coffee, person who volunteers at the conference, the person who covers an event, you know, the person who asks the clarifying question, creates a small gathering. All of these are really valuable ways to kickstart your marketing. And the reason both of these strategies work, and I brought them up in the same episode, is that they do the same thing, right?
They insert you into the organizing ecosystem rather than kind of leaving you on the outside, waiting for someone else to create the opening. And when you're in that role, even informally, the momentum that has felt so hard, it starts to build and compound on its own. And people just look at you differently, right?
I don't like to promise magic in these, but the fact is, when you become the organizer, you start being looked at differently and you're just remembered. So, my friends, speaking of building momentum, if this episode resonated with you, I want to make sure you know about something I've got coming up on April 27th. On that Monday, I'm hosting a relationship marketing training, and that training is going to be all about answering a question I get all the time, which is like, hey, Michelle, what does your relationship marketing look like day to day?
Like, I believe in you, I believe in this, but it just sounds like it takes a lot of time. Can't really wrap my head around how often I'm in a relationship, how often I'm in a relationship, how often you're doing this, what you're doing, what the success metrics look like. Can you give us a look into your world?
So that's exactly what I'm going to be doing. I'm hosting a training again on Monday, April 27th, 2 p.m. Eastern, so just a few days after this episode comes out. That is going to be behind the scenes of relationship marketing, my relationship marketing.
I'm opening the curtains, showing you exactly how my system works. You can grab a spot for that at themichellewarner.kit.com/relationshipmarketing. That is a whole lot of words.
So we'll also get in the show notes and you can see it on all my social media. And if you're on my email list, you will get all the info on how to sign up for that sucker. But again, that is at themichellewarner.kit.com/relationshipmarketing. Would love to see you there. And as always, thank you for being here today. If this episode helped you, I would be so grateful if you shared it with someone else that might help.
Or if you feel like leaving a review. Those are always really helpful as well in getting this information out there. And with that, I will tell you, thank you for always being here and I'll see you again back here in two weeks.
Resources
If you're drawn to relationship marketing but can't quite picture what it looks like in practice: the daily habits, the time commitment, which metrics you should be tracking to know if it's working -this free live training is for you. Michelle Warner is opening the books and walking you through a real day (and a real month) in her almost social media-free relationship marketing practice, so you can see exactly what it looks like behind the scenes. This is for people who are relationship marketing-curious and are ready to see the workflow in action to understand what it would look like in their business.
Join her live on April 27th at 2pm ET. Register free at the link below. Registration Link: https://themichellewarne.kit.com/relationshipmarketing