How do you connect with people that are too busy to see you? Did it happen to you that you want to meet somebody but whatever you did you could not get hold of her?
I remember once somebody recommended to me to try to ask the other person, “Can I have coffee with you to pick your brain?”. Really do you really think this works? Assuming the other person has a very busy schedule, this is probably the worst possible way to get a meeting with her. Getting meetings with super-busy people isn’t impossible – if you do it right.
Let me suggest for you a better approach.
As you can imagine, and as being a known networker, sometimes I get several hundred emails a day, and a good number of them trying to schedule a meeting with me by offering me coffee, lunch and other ideas how to pick up my brain. I must admit not every email get my attention and some of them I do not even bother to answer.
In the last couple of years I discovered and realized that most entrepreneurs don’t know how to get meetings with people too busy to see you. So I’ve come up with my method to sort out who I will meet and who not.
We all know that opportunities must be grabbed in order to succeed, and that means trial and error, which means meetings. The good news is that also busy people need to set up meetings to grow their business and find interesting new opportunities. So getting a meeting with them isn’t impossible – if you do it right.
Here’s a list of proven strategies to schedule a meeting with busy people:
1. Be referred by someone they know
You should do your best efforts in advance, before approaching the person you want to meet, and research who in your current network knows her and can refer you to her. You should look for someone that she already take seriously.
Remember: mentioning it to the referral source in advance and ask for his permission will help a lot in the connection to the other person. Please refrain from using name-drop and definitely do not make it up!
2. Be specific and considerate
You should be very specific while connecting to others and definitely to very busy people. You should refrain from using an open-ended timeframe request. Your request should be as much as possible, very specific, for a specific purpose, in a specific time frame and in specific location (definitely of the choice of the other person). The more considerable you are, the more chance the other person will be willing to meet you.
Once you got to meet the person, continue to be considerable for their time and leave before they have to kick you out, and within the allotted time frame.
3. Be interesting and interested
Did you ever thought about the subject of your email for requesting a meeting or you use just a normal subject, e.g. “Request for a meeting”? What exactly did you said in the telephone conversation with the person’s personal assistant when you tried to schedule a meeting? Were you interested in the gatekeeper or the only thing you had in your mind is scheduling the meeting? The more interesting and unique you will be, the more you will get the attention from the other person. The more you give sincere attention to the gatekeeper who help you schedule a meeting and be interested in them, the more chance you will get an opportunity to meet the person.
4. Be understanding
Remember: the other person is very busy; so don’t ask for a big commitment of time from her. Make the smallest request you can. Put them at ease with your request. For example, ask them to “take a look”, not make a commitment. That will help them to say “yes” to you faster.
5. Be prepared and well in advance
Use all the time needed to learn more information on the person you are trying to reach, before making any attempt or sending any request. Nowadays, you can find a lot of information online on who they are, what they like and how they operate. Try to find common interests, it will help you build trust and easy connection with the other person.
6. Be creative
Create your own opportunities. My recommendation is always to find a way to meet the other person face-to-face. For example, learn where she will be in the coming weeks and try to join this event as well. Be unusual, be interesting and use what you have learned about the other person to connect. This always worked for me and got me to connect to the other person immediately. After that, it was very easy to schedule a follow up meeting.
Meeting and networking with busy person involves creativity, respect for the other person and her needs, giving genuine attention and sometimes being bold.
My rule: who is offering to teach me something I don’t know.
In a perfect world that I’d had an infinite time, I’d probably schedule a meeting with everyone who asks to have coffee with me. This is my natural interest in other people and always expecting the unexpected in networking. But we do not live in a perfect world and I don’t meet everybody that want to meet. I use a specific filter to prioritize my meetings: as a giver I am looking for people who is offering to teach me something I don’t know.
I learned during the years that healthy business relationships are those who build on give and take reciprocity rule. Business relationships are about an exchange of ideas and knowledge.
Thus, if somebody approach me to schedule a meeting and want to exchange with me also knowledge on a subject that interest me, this meeting will get my priority. The reason for that is that this meeting is not anymore a unilateral meeting – you’re learning from me, but mutual meeting – two way meeting – we’re learning from each other.
How would you like other people to approach you?
“Itzik is an International Speaker, Bestselling Author, Business Mentor & Attorney-at-law. The Global Leading Authority on Business Development, Business Networking, Referrals & Relationship Capital & Founder of THE SWITCH® and THE SWITCH HUB®”
