Creating Awareness - The Lombardi Way!
With our soon-to-be-crowned super bowl winner receiving the "Lombardi Trophy", I thought it appropriate that we "kick-off" our first monthly 2007 radio episode with; "Creating Awareness, "The Lombardi Way".
Most likely you've heard this story before. It has become legendary. The Green Bay Packer franchise had been losing for almost ten straight years. They were at the bottom of the standings, and morale was sagging.
Enter Vince Lombardi as the new coach. He is charged with the challenge of turning this franchise around, and he's all pumped up about it. He began leading practices, inspiring, training, motivating. But at one point in a practice, he just got so frustrated with what was going on with the players that he blew the whistle.
"Everybody stop and gather around," he said. Then he knelt down, picked up the pigskin, and said, "Let's start at the beginning. This is a football. These are the yard markers. I'm the coach. You are the players." He went on, in the most elementary of ways, to explain the basics of football.
Using the "Lombardi Way" of explaining networking, it all begins with the fundamental first step of "Creating Awareness."
Seems simple enough but like Vince Lombardi's Spartan philosophy of winning football games, it takes hard work.
With our first month of the 2007 series; "A Year in the Life of a Networker", I wanted to convey that awareness, the first step in TNC's five step networking process is not a one time event. It's a process, not an event.
It takes lots of frequency to create awareness. In fact, it takes 45 impressions over time to create effective awareness. Because of all the distractions in today's 21st century economy, your message is being heard only once every five times. So for every 45 times that you are creating awareness, the person on the other side of the conversation is only listening 20% of the time. This means that it takes nine different impressions of awareness for you to just obtain the first step in networking.
One-on-one networking is the most powerful means for creating awareness. Nothing beats being up front and personal for creating impressions. However, in-between your personal networking, "life happens" and you and your message are soon drowned out with the other 3,000 + messages, we as consumers receive each day.
So, with your networking awareness campaigns build-in a means to touch base to maintain "top of mind" awareness when you are not there.
Perhaps this could be a newsletter that provides relevant, personalized and useful information. This will additionally set you apart as an expert in your field.
In today's e-world, hand written notes have a huge impact. If you are going to send an email, find an article or subject matter of specific interest. It's the baby steps that count most in creating awareness.
Vince Lombardi's tradition of excellence and winning football games was achieved through consistency. With networking your first step of creating awareness is an ongoing series of impressions that will ultimately make you a networking winner.
The "coach" also has another quote; "Football is a game of inches and inches make a champion."
And so networking is a game of impressions and these awareness impressions over time, will make you a networking champion.
Most likely you've heard this story before. It has become legendary. The Green Bay Packer franchise had been losing for almost ten straight years. They were at the bottom of the standings, and morale was sagging.
Enter Vince Lombardi as the new coach. He is charged with the challenge of turning this franchise around, and he's all pumped up about it. He began leading practices, inspiring, training, motivating. But at one point in a practice, he just got so frustrated with what was going on with the players that he blew the whistle.
"Everybody stop and gather around," he said. Then he knelt down, picked up the pigskin, and said, "Let's start at the beginning. This is a football. These are the yard markers. I'm the coach. You are the players." He went on, in the most elementary of ways, to explain the basics of football.
Using the "Lombardi Way" of explaining networking, it all begins with the fundamental first step of "Creating Awareness."
Seems simple enough but like Vince Lombardi's Spartan philosophy of winning football games, it takes hard work.
With our first month of the 2007 series; "A Year in the Life of a Networker", I wanted to convey that awareness, the first step in TNC's five step networking process is not a one time event. It's a process, not an event.
It takes lots of frequency to create awareness. In fact, it takes 45 impressions over time to create effective awareness. Because of all the distractions in today's 21st century economy, your message is being heard only once every five times. So for every 45 times that you are creating awareness, the person on the other side of the conversation is only listening 20% of the time. This means that it takes nine different impressions of awareness for you to just obtain the first step in networking.
One-on-one networking is the most powerful means for creating awareness. Nothing beats being up front and personal for creating impressions. However, in-between your personal networking, "life happens" and you and your message are soon drowned out with the other 3,000 + messages, we as consumers receive each day.
So, with your networking awareness campaigns build-in a means to touch base to maintain "top of mind" awareness when you are not there.
Perhaps this could be a newsletter that provides relevant, personalized and useful information. This will additionally set you apart as an expert in your field.
In today's e-world, hand written notes have a huge impact. If you are going to send an email, find an article or subject matter of specific interest. It's the baby steps that count most in creating awareness.
Vince Lombardi's tradition of excellence and winning football games was achieved through consistency. With networking your first step of creating awareness is an ongoing series of impressions that will ultimately make you a networking winner.
The "coach" also has another quote; "Football is a game of inches and inches make a champion."
And so networking is a game of impressions and these awareness impressions over time, will make you a networking champion.
posted by The Networking Community Radio Show at
4:07 PM
