If you suddenly had to start a search for a new role, how confident are you that you know people who could introduce you to the right people or who would consider creating a role for you?
You may not be surprised by any of this:
Most executive roles are not advertised.
Those that are advertised have been earmarked for someone before they are even posted and sent to the headhunter.
Many executive roles are created with an individual in mind. Whole corporate reorganizations happen because one executive needs expanded responsibilities, has a personal desire to take over another function, or is covering for a gap in someone else’s capability.
Executives hire executives who they know and love from past lives or from strong referrals from board members, investors, and corporate peers.
I recently bought two tomato plants and decided to put one in the front of the garden in the greatest sunny spot, and the other pot on our terrace where there is an automatic drip water feeder. I had great intentions of watering the tomatoes at the front, but often I would miss several days and they would end up dehydrated. The plants on the terrace though not getting quite as much sun produced an abundance of tomatoes because they were regularly getting watered.
I find many executives let their network get dehydrated in the same way. It’s easy to forget about it until you most need it, and then you find it has wilted away.
Just like cold call selling doesn’t work, cold networking doesn’t work either, where you show up to an event and hope to bump into someone you would want to stay connected with and mutually learn from.
How can you create your own automatic feeder of your network so it will abundantly produce for you whenever you need it?
In Divorce Your Friends and Network, Chapter Eight of my first book Thoughtfully Ruthless, I provide tools to evaluate and improve your network with Perfecting Your Connections and Evaluating Your Network. You can download all of the tools from my book for free here.
Dedicated to growing your business,
Val
P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/
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