Chapter 17

PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR ADAPTING TO SOCIAL OCCASIONS

NOW YOU’RE PREPARED and it’s time to make an entrance. You’re standing at the entrance to a lavish banquet hall. Inside the doors, there’s a beautiful selection of self-serve catered food, glasses are filled to the brim with a selection of drinks from the bar, and some brisk music plays in the background. What you’re facing is a couple hundred random people. All are wearing formal attire with their own slightly unique pieces of flare. These unfamiliar guests are moving about with elegant manners, talking and laughing. Do you want to head on in? Here’s some help on how to handle it.

Blend in slowly.

You don’t need to force yourself to stand in the center of the room (this is oftentimes what the female lead does in a chick flick, right?) or go everywhere shaking hands with everyone (that’s a job for a politician, not you). All you need to do is find a rhythm that’s comfortable for you; when you make eye contact with someone, smile, and blend into the venue with a short or upbeat greeting. Gradually familiarizing yourself with the mood of the place can help you stave off excessive energy burnout.

Make up some topics for on-the-fly conversations.

In his book Talking with Confidence for the Painfully Shy, Don Gabor suggests that you “prepare a couple [of] topics that you can talk about with ease, such as a book you recently read, a great restaurant you went to, or something interesting that happened on a recent vacation.” For business professionals, business trip experiences (such as a specific location’s weather or food), work insights, and current industry situations are all great topics for conversation. Keep in mind, though, that these are all padded topics to ease you in to what you really want to say to a prospective partner or client. It’s best to start off with a relaxed topic about something common; for instance, you could ask, “How did you hear about today’s event?” Starting off by talking about your work can also make it easier for the other person to follow along with what you’re saying.

Help the host.

You can be proactive and ask the event organizer or the host if there’s anything you can help with, such as setting up computers, testing out the projector machines, helping guests check in, or preparing drinks. Volunteering is always one of my favorite ways to pitch in.

In addition, try not to place emphasis on yourself. Instead of always thinking that “this is so boring, this is getting kinda painful, I want to leave,” you can pay attention to the event and make sure the guests are all comfortable; you can give others support by smiling wherever possible, nodding your head, and maintaining eye contact. Oh, and by the way, by doing these things, you might just come to the rescue of another introvert!

Focus on small group conversations and leave gracefully.

Groups made up of one to three other people are perfect for introverts; it’s easier for you to find your voice in a small group compared to a larger group. If you want to join an ongoing conversation, don’t be inconsiderate or rude and butt your way in. As long as you slowly work your way closer to the group, people will often automatically open up a spot for you. When you gain a foothold, briefly introduce yourself or express some of your own ideas about the topic at hand.

Remember: your objective should be to establish meaningful connections. That doesn’t just mean getting the other person’s business card and calling it a day; it’s more about working on a business relationship. Rather than having unflagging perseverance to stay to the end, it’s better if you leave before you’ve spent all your energy. Remember to say something like this when you leave: “Thanks for sharing your info with me. I’m glad I got to meet you today. Let’s keep in touch!” With all this in mind, you can end the conversation gracefully and leave the event.

Keep pursuing contacts effectively.

Now that you’ve left the event, the most troublesome part has come. You prepped in advance, everything seemed to have gone well during the event, but now is where most people tend to fail. After the event, many don’t contact the people they met.

Regardless of what kind of venue I’ve been to, if I encounter politicians and exchange business cards with them, they’ll send me letters or text messages all the time. Of course, in general, people don’t need to and don’t always have the time to keep up with every person they meet like this. To us introverts, effectively winning over key people is far more important than increasing our overall number of contacts. But remember, quality over quantity! So, what’s next? Should you write that polite email to your VIP, saying, “I’m happy to have met you”? About 95 percent of the time, you won’t get a response. The remaining 5 percent of the time, you might, but that’s probably the end of the communication. When you do reach out to your target client or partner, try to do so in a systematic, continuous way to increase their familiarity with you and to increase their sense that you have a path of reliable and insightful communication. If it’s been awhile since you’ve conversed, this is not a time to share jokes with them or suddenly hit them with a sales pitch like “Our company is having a special sales price for XX product. Would you happen to be interested?” Reliability and familiarity aren’t things that jokes and sales pitches will help you with.

John Corcoran, author of How to Increase Your Income in 14 Days by Building a Relationship with VIPs, brings up several methods you can use to be effective in following up on contacts.

Set up a follow-up timeline.

As you are probably aware, it’s a lot easier for introverts to communicate in written form rather than talk in formal social situations. But now that you’ve conquered the formal gathering and the most difficult part has passed, don’t give up communicating. After the event ends, I recommend that you immediately sort through the business cards you gathered and contacts you added, and organize them based on their industry, their job position, their relationship to your own career, and the degree to which they spoke with you. There are great technologies out there to help you do this quickly. You should set up how long you want to wait to contact them and the ways in which you plan to contact them.

Introduce mutual contacts.

One of the best ways to avoid thinking up a topic for conversation is to introduce mutually relevant contacts from your network. When you do so, you’re proving your value and continuing to warm your relationship with your new business contact. If you can also help give publicity to the other party—for example, by promoting a seminar organized by that person, or by recommending their company’s most recent value packages—your standing with your new contact will be even better.

Actively use social media.

You can use blogs to highlight your accomplishments and abilities. LinkedIn is also a powerful social tool for people in the workplace; join as many groups and add as many contacts as you can, and remember, “circles” have greater influence the larger they are. In some countries, people tend to use Facebook frequently even for professional purposes. Even though some believe it’s not very formal, if you use this platform deftly and share mostly industry-related info, it can actually bring you and your work colleagues closer. You might also discover that the profile pictures you choose to post can also help your targets remember your appearance more than the business cards you gave them can.

When you’re sharing information on social media or via emails, however, be careful about what and how often you share. Although it is easy to share seemingly useful articles, for instance, doing so might actually be counterproductive. CNN once conducted a survey that showed that, on average, nine-to-fivers get about eighty-five emails a day. If you’re not certain whether the person you’re contacting will be interested in what you have to share, think twice about sending it.