Networking Drag Race

Today I met with a student from one of our Certified Networker classes. He is a financial planner -- one who has retired from a successful career in corporate America. This is a tough transition.

His confusion was with the lack of excitement on the part of an attorney that he offered to "be a resource" to. He said, I just don't understand why he doesn't want to have me be part of his team. I'm not selling anything to him."

I asked him the level of relationship he had with said lawyer. The answer was "very early stages of relationship."

I sat back and said, "Well, let me get this straight. Someone is going to risk his reputation with his clients with someone he doesn't even know?"

I have to give credit to my student. The light bulb went on. Even though in the strict sense of the word, he was not selling, he realized that he really was. And because he hadn't done any credibility building, there was no trust factor to enable the attorney to say yes.

Additionally, the attorney had no idea what my student would do for him in return, except take profits from his client. My student was rushing the relationship. Seth Godin talked about this in a post about political campaigns and access to email. He says, "Political campaigns extinguish plenty of goodwill because they instantly move from 0 to 60 miles per hour."

Have you been "rushed?" How did you feel about the person who was doing the rushing?