How To Stand Out At An Industry Networking Event

Описание: Differentiation gives you leverage over your network. You want to connect massively with these people, but you also want to stand out from the crowd. You want to connect, but you don't want to lose your identity. You don't want to just be seen as another PhD. You want to be seen as unique. Connecting is important, but standing out is just as important. It's kind of a fine line you have to walk. Define yourself first. If you don't define yourself, somebody else will. You might not like how they define you. You might be seen as just another PhD, another boring PhD that cannot communicate, another creep, somebody that lacks social skills. I mean, this is ... For no matter what industry it is, there are going to be biases. You want to establish who you are first.

A great way to do this is to develop what's called an elevator pitch. Has anybody heard of an elevator pitch? This is great. Now you've probably developed an elevator pitch just accidentally if you've ever stood at your post for long enough. You developed like a one minute pitch to tell somebody, so they wouldn't walk away in the beginning. That's kind of what you're going to do for yourself. Your elevator pitch is going to be what you are, and what you want, and what you're about. It could be and what your work is too. When you're meeting people, if you have this elevator pitch, it's going to keep you from boring them to death, is what's going to happen.

For example, when I was in London and I was meeting those publishers, I noticed a lot of people would go up and talk to these publishers, and they would have no idea what to say. These were all people that wanted to publish a book. They had no idea what to say, so the publisher would say, "So what do you do?" Then they would just start blabbing on and on about what school they went to, what all their interests under the sun were, what their favorite color was, all this stuff. The publisher's eyes would just glaze over. The people that were really effective and kept building relationships with those publishers had like a five second sentence that they were able to say right away that grabbed their attention. You need to develop that five second sentence for yourself too with as few words as possible. What are you about? What do you do? What do you want? Lead with that.

Have you guys heard of burying the lead? Have you guys heard this before? Like if you write a paper, have you heard of a topic sentence? This is like your topic sentence. In the newspaper industry, if you bury the lead, a lot of people will write all their ideas down in a paragraph and at the very end summarize it in a great sentence. That great sentence at the end needs to be moved to the top. That's your topic sentence. Alright? If you don't do that, you bury it. That's burying the lead. This is your topic sentence. Your elevator pitch is your topic sentence, because people don't pay attention anymore. You've noticed this. Nowadays this is being called the escalator pitch. You really only have the amount of time that it takes to cross somebody's path on an escalator where they're going up and you're coming down. That's it. That's how much time you have to get their attention.

When you're meeting high level people, think of the biggest scientist, the biggest name in your field. We have a lot of different fields here. Think of the biggest name. If you got in front of them, what would you say? They don't want to hear you rattle on. Think of what your message would be right away. How would you get their attention so when you walked away they would remember who you are?