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Networking Is a Lost Art
When I was 23 years old, I started my first company. I was the VP of Sales and Marketing, which sounds impressive until you remember the entire company was three other guys and me working out of a basement. I had no idea what I was doing.
One of our advisors told me that if I wanted to grow the business, I had to go to networking events. "That's where the deals happen," he said. So I found one, put on a button-down shirt, and showed up.
I walked in, grabbed a drink at the bar, turned around, and had no idea what to do next.
Everyone already seemed to know each other. Clusters of people laughing, trading business cards, clinking glasses. And there I was in the corner, holding my drink like a life preserver, pretending to check my phone so I didn't look as alone as I felt. (Thanks AI for the image of me with hair. And yes, I did used to have a beautiful head of blond hair back in the day 😁)
Then I ordered another drink. And another. And maybe one after that. Somewhere around drink number four, I stopped caring about looking stupid and started breaking into conversations. I walked up to a group, stuck my hand out, and said hello. Then I did it again. And again. I went home that night having actually talked to people and made a few connections.
I do not recommend the four-drink strategy. But here's what I learned that night. Once you do it once, the next one is easier. And the one after that is easier still. Networking is a muscle, not a talent. Nobody is born knowing how to walk up to a stranger at a cocktail event and start a conversation that actually goes somewhere. You learn it by doing it badly, over and over, until you stop doing it badly.
I went to hundreds more after that. And somewhere along the way, I started to see something that I now believe is one of the biggest missed opportunities in sales right now.
Networking is a LOST ART.
Most sales reps today have no idea how to walk into a room of strangers and build real relationships. They hide behind LinkedIn DMs, cold emails, and automated sequences because it's safer. They have never been taught how to look a stranger in the eye, start a conversation, and turn it into something. The ones who can do it are pulling away from the ones who can't, and the gap is getting wider.
Think about the reps you know who are crushing it right now. The ones closing the biggest deals. I'll bet most of them have a network they've been building for years. Not followers. Not LinkedIn connections. Real human relationships with people who will take their call, refer them business, and vouch for them in rooms they're not in.
That kind of network does not get built over email. It gets built face-to-face, at events, at dinners, at conferences, at the bar after the conference. And it compounds for the rest of your career.
I spent Q1 doing about a dozen Sales Kickoffs across the country, and every single one of them had a cocktail event the night before. By the third one, I realized my own muscles were rusty. So I sat down and put everything I've learned over the last 20+ years about working a room into one playbook. Opening lines. Exit lines. How to read body language. How to handle the person who won't stop talking. How to actually remember names. How to follow up so the connection sticks.
I called it Work the Room. If you want it, hit reply to this email and I'll send it over. Replies also help my deliverability, so you'll be doing me a favor at the same time.
Here's the part I've been thinking about the most.
Working the room gets you in the door. READING the room is what closes the deal.
Walking up to a stranger at a cocktail event and starting a conversation is one skill. Walking into a discovery call and adjusting your entire approach in the first 90 seconds based on the human across the table is a completely different one. And most salespeople are terrible at the second one.
They have one mode. One pitch. One pace. One tone. They walk into every meeting ready to run the same playbook regardless of who they're talking to. Then they wonder why the CFO shut them down in six minutes while the VP of Marketing wouldn't stop nodding.
There's a framework called DISC that's been around for decades, and it breaks people down into four basic styles based on how they communicate and make decisions. Driver. Influencer. Steady. Conscientious. I use Driver, Analytical, Expressive, and Amiable because it's easier to remember, but it's the same idea. Every person you sell to leans toward one of these four, and once you can spot which one, you know how to talk to them.
A Driver wants you to get to the point in the first sentence. An Analytical wants you to walk through the data before you make a claim. An Expressive wants a story and some energy. An Amiable wants you to slow down and make them feel comfortable before you ask for anything. If you can't read which one is sitting across from you, you're going to lose deals you should have won.
That's exactly what I'm covering in the webinar next week: Personas and Personalities - How to read the room in real time and adjust your style to match the person you're selling to. No theory. Real tactics you can use on your next call.
Wednesday, April 15 at 11:00 AM ET. Register here
Here's the part that's been blowing my mind lately.
You don't have to guess at anyone's personality anymore.
I've been using Otter on every single one of my calls. Internal meetings, client calls, podcast interviews, sales conversations. It records everything and stores it all in one place. The move I started making recently is dropping all my conversations with a specific person or account into a single folder and pointing AI at it.
You know what comes out? A personality profile I could never have built from memory. How this person communicates. What they respond to. What shuts them down. Their tone. Their pace. Their priorities. I walk into the next call already tuned to their frequency instead of trying to read it cold.
Otter is sponsoring the webinar next week (and I'm using them because I actually use them every day, not because they wrote a check). Everyone who registers is going to see exactly how I'm running this workflow live.
Work the room to get the meeting. Read the room to win it. And stop hiding behind your laptop.
See you Wednesday.
#MakeItHappen