Synopsis

Last week Dr. Misner talked about the top seven characteristics of a great networker. This week he’s sharing the five least important skills for networking according to that same survey of 3400 business people. Knowing what not to do can be as important as knowing what to do.

Many people think you need to be an extrovert to be a good networker, but that’s not what the survey says. Here are five least important skills for networking. You don’t need to be

* Fearless

* A salesperson

* A self-promoter

* Direct

* Social media savvy

That’s right: social media skills are not an indicator of great networking ability. The under-30 crowd ranked social media savvy second-to-last instead of last.

It’s also clear from these results that great networkers and great salespeople have different skill sets.

Brought to you by the Networking for Success Channel on YouTube.

Complete Transcript of Episode 502 –

Priscilla:

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by the Networking for Success Channel on YouTube, featuring Dr. Ivan Miser and many other networking experts. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan, how are you and where are you?

Ivan:

Hey, so this week, I am in India. I spent some time in Bangalore, India, where the BNI Foundation and the Misner Family Foundation have supported the Bluebells School, which is a school in Bangalore. An amazing, amazing school. They do incredible things. We have actually even helped them build an entire floor on their school, on their building to help them serve more children.

Priscilla:

That’s so great.

Ivan:

That’s in Bangalore. This week, I am in Mumbai. This is my second visit to India and the incredible chapters here. There are a number of chapters, over 100, if you can believe that. It is just amazing. So I am excited to be back in India. I look forward to coming back again. We have many, many listeners to the BNI Podcast here.

This week, we are going to be talking about the five least important skills to be a great networker. In last weeks’s podcast, I talked about the seven ways to better networking. That and this are based on a survey I conducted of almost 3400 people around the world. In the survey, I asked participants -this was open to the general public, by the way, not just BNI members. I asked participants from all over the world what they thought the top characteristics of being a great networker were.

So if you didn’t listen to last week’s podcast, go there and take a peek at it and listen to it. You’ll get the top seven skills. This is out of about 20. This week, I want to talk about the least important skill because I think knowing what not to do is as important as what to do in developing a certain skill set.

So in this podcast, I am going to walk you through the five least important skills to be great at networking. Over the last 30 years, I have found that most people assume that being an extrovert is an advantage in networking. But let’s take a good look at the bottom five characteristics. Four out of the five least important skills to be a great networker had something to do with being outspoken or bold – characteristics more aligned with being an extrovert than an introvert. Really, this surprises me a little bit, that four out of five would be there.

The top seven characteristics also focused on relationship building themes,