I stopped doing networking calls three or four years ago.
There was one call that finally broke me.
It was awkward from the beginning. The other person wanted to network with me and kept asking, well, dumb questions.
I know they say there are no dumb questions. These were dumb questions.
“What’s your favorite color?”
Who cares? I’m pretty sure I said that out loud on the call. Unless you’re my three year old niece, nobody cares. (Her favorite color is pink, by the way – she reminds me frequently.)
At some point I remember thinking, I just don’t want to be here.
Then she offered to refer me to another person. I told her that wasn’t necessary.
Two days later I got a lecture for not following up with that irrelevant person who was also in her networking cult.
Look – I’m here to get business, not join more calls.
And look, I’m a pragmatic guy. If networking calls got me more business, I’d power through them every day like a champ and just get it done.
But I looked at my numbers.
My best clients and my best referrals come from doing outreach and from current and past clients. That’s where the good referrals come from.
The worst referrals? The tire kickers and time wasters? Those come from networking.
So I’ve found it’s frequently a better use of my time to do nothing than to take another networking call that just leads to more networking calls. It’s a never ending cycle of time waste.
For me, doing cold outreach, recording podcast episodes and talking with guests, hosting events, even scrolling through my LinkedIn feed leaving sarcastic comments (or more likely, animated GIFs and memes) – it’s all a better use of my time than taking one more networking call.
So I just stopped.
Now if you want to network with me, we’ll do it at an event. Or more likely at the hotel bar for a while. That’s my idea of networking now.
I stopped doing networking calls three or four years ago.
There was one call that finally broke me.
It was awkward from the beginning. The other person wanted to network with me and kept asking, well, dumb questions.
I know they say there are no dumb questions. These were dumb questions.
“What’s your favorite color?”
Who cares? I’m pretty sure I said that out loud on the call. Unless you’re my three year old niece, nobody cares. (Her favorite color is pink, by the way – she reminds me frequently.)
At some point I remember thinking, I just don’t want to be here.
Then she offered to refer me to another person. I told her that wasn’t necessary.
Two days later I got a lecture for not following up with that irrelevant person who was also in her networking cult.
Look – I’m here to get business, not join more calls.
And look, I’m a pragmatic guy. If networking calls got me more business, I’d power through them every day like a champ and just get it done.
But I looked at my numbers.
My best clients and my best referrals come from doing outreach and from current and past clients. That’s where the good referrals come from.
The worst referrals? The tire kickers and time wasters? Those come from networking.
So I’ve found it’s frequently a better use of my time to do nothing than to take another networking call that just leads to more networking calls. It’s a never ending cycle of time waste.
For me, doing cold outreach, recording podcast episodes and talking with guests, hosting events, even scrolling through my LinkedIn feed leaving sarcastic comments (or more likely, animated GIFs and memes) – it’s all a better use of my time than taking one more networking call.
So I just stopped.
Now if you want to network with me, we’ll do it at an event. Or more likely at the hotel bar for a while. That’s my idea of networking now.
Zoom calls? Virtual networking? Nope. I’m out.