Step #1 – Reach Out
Networking is more than just going to professional association meetings, eating lunch or dinner with strangers and collecting business cards. There are specific methods for getting a pay off in every networking activity that you engage in!
1. Be intentional. Even before you sign-up for an event, before you pick up the phone, or before you send a resume to anyone, you should have a plan, a goal and an expected outcome for each and every activity that you perform.
2. Categorize Your Contacts. Organizing and categorizing your contact database is key to understanding how to communicate with each contact and what to expect. I recommend that you classify your contacts into three types: power brokers, peers, and pay-it-forward individuals.
3. Customize Your Communications. Once you’ve classified your contacts appropriately, develop different messages for each. Power Brokers, who are one or two levels above you in their career, require valuable strategically positioned messages. Peers, those who are at the same level as you, are great sources for information about companies and contacts. Pay-it-forward groups, those who are one or two levels below you, need only brief and infrequent contact.
Step #2 – Build Trust
Building trust should be part of your continual networking efforts. Building trust is essential in getting others to give you leads and potential opportunities.
1. Intentional Volunteering. When you give, you get. But giving of your time, resources and expertise should be more than just “hoping something will happen.” To volunteer to give AND get results, you need to intentionally volunteer where you can be visible and valuable.
2. Attitude Determine Altitude. Your attitude to volunteering should be about providing value to the other person/group and that you are going to give your very best. This is not the time to “act as a volunteer.”
3. Insider Information. The goal of volunteering is that you should be of such value that you are brought into the “insider group” so that you are the first to know about any opportunities or job searches that companies are conducting BEFORE they post the job.
Step #3 – Develop Talking Points
It is what you SAY that gets you hired; not what you write. Finding opportunities are all part of the process of getting hired. Developing Oral Talking Points that are crisp, clear and memorable will set you apart from the pack.
1. Elevator Pitch. First impressions, as the saying goes, last forever. Yet most $100K+ executives develop their elevator pitch like a mini-resume and often they are boring! Market Your Potential, Not Your Past has a full chapter on the 7 rules for developing an elevator pitch that gets results, including real-life before and after examples!
2. Informational Interview. Why would you call anyone without writing out a script? Yet over and over again, people pick up the phone, dial the number of their contact and then freeze because they don’t know what to say. Write, re-write, and rehearse your introduction along with a closing that gets results.
3. Face-to-Face Meetings. Let’s say you get someone interested in you and invites you to meet with them even if they don’t have an opening at the time. What do you say? How can you make sure that it is a valuable two-way conversation about the business? What will you do to paint the picture in your listener’s mind where they “see” you working at their company? By now, you know the answer – script it out!
Step #4 – Use Low-Key Sales Tactics
Learning how to sell is vital to moving opportunities along – whether or not you are in sales or not. Asking for a job when you haven’t moved the relationship along is not appropriate and neither is it appropriate, if you are a top $100K+ Executive talent, to not “ask for the order.”
1. Prepare to close. Learn to develop and incorporate trial closes, which are open-ended questions (those that start with who, what, where, why, when and/or how,) to gain information and valuable insights along the way towards a final sale.
2. Use Resources Available. Your local library is filled with books about how to sell. Ask a business associate who is a sales professional to help you. Practice orally your trial closes and get comfortable using low-key sales tactics.
These four sure-fire tactics are necessary to get you moving today. However, these are just the beginning. For more tools and information about how to get better results in your executive-level job search, read my bio and click on the link to my website.
$100K+ Executive-Level Career Coach Karen Armon prepares leaders around the world for their next move. Her popular book , Market Your Potential, Not Your Past is a hit among executives who want a clear-cut, systematic game plan that drives careers forward. Now get her new FREE eBook, “Ten Micro-Trends that Impact Executive Careers Today” at http://www.marketoneexecutive.com/ebook.asp and take a critical look at today’s marketplace.
4 Surefire Tactics to Keep Your $100K Executive Job Search Alive and Kicking | EmploymentDigest.net
