I understand and appreciate very much where you're coming from. Even though I count so many people here as friends and not just business associates, there's still only so much "just socializing" that a busy entrepreneur can handle during the day.

And yet, there was something that just kept nagging at me about your posts, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Well, I finally did...

"I'm wanting to network with those who are serious prospects."

OK... here's the thing...

No one is here on Ryze or any other networking site because they're looking to buy.

There is no such thing, I think, as "networking with serious prospects", because no one is a prospect at the point in time you're networking with them. That's not to say that people won't buy -- just that they're not here because they're looking to buy.

There's a temptation to try to turn everyone into a prospect, but doing so misses the mark, in my experience. You absolutely DO want to engage with the kind of people who could be "serious prospects", because people tend to know people like themselves. So the more people you meet like that, the more people you will meet like that. And that increases your pool of people who are potentially "serious prospects".

But if you approach them as prospects rather than simply focusing on developing the relationships, that turns most people off and will get you nowhere fast.

Maybe I'm reading too much into that one sentence, Katie, but that's what people tend to do online. ;-) So if I'm willing to articulate it, I reckon there are a bunch of other people thinking it, at least subconsciously. And that may not be at all what you meant, but I'm letting you know that that's how it comes across, so you might want to reconsider how you word it when you enter other networks and other sites.

Scott Allen
How I Became an A-List Blogger (And You Can Too)

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