Best networking advice: “talk to people, without fear” – Maria Wallenius
Maria Wallenius on her best networking advice, filmed at MAD//Fest for Best Networking Advice I Ever Got.
What if people are more helpful than you’re telling yourself?
This is only video number seven, but as you’ve seen – and as you’ll see in future releases – many of the same ideas around networking come back again and again.
Why?
Because they’re true!
Maria gave me some brilliantly concise advice. Just like Mikaela (the previous video), she’s got a way of getting to the heart of what matters.
“Talk to people without fear. Most people are very nice and they will talk to you back.”
There are three recurring themes that sit in Maria’s video:
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
People are more helpful than you’re telling yourself.
And networking pays out over the long term.
Finding it hard to figure out how you can make this advice work for you?
Of course!
Because knowing that people are nice, and feeling it when you’re hovering at the edge of a room are two different things. It’s hard to talk yourself into believing it in the moment, even when it’s 1) true; and 2) backed up by research.
It’s practice – “getting in the reps”, as I call it – that will help you prove this to yourself.
In fact, research really does back this up. In six studies, Frank Flynn and Vanessa Lake found that people underestimate by up to 50% how likely others are to say yes to a direct request for help. That’s because we focus on the inconvenience to the other person of saying yes, while underestimating how awkward it feels for them to say no. In a separate line of work, Nicholas Epley asked commuters to try talking to a stranger on their journey. Participants predicted that fewer than half of their fellow commuters would be willing to chat; in the experiment, none of those who tried were rebuffed.
One thing you won't see from the video: how good Maria is at her actual job. A few hours after we said goodbye, she had put me in touch with two people interested in my networking training. Maria and I have known each other for years now, so that's the long-term payout she's describing, happening in just one afternoon.
Maria Wallenius is a business development and sales consultant, building commercial relationships across the programmatic ecosystem – agencies, brands, DSPs and data platforms – in the UK and across EMEA. A native Finnish speaker, she has spent her career in start-ups and scale-ups, building commercial functions from scratch where no playbook existed. An expert in sales, business development and lead generation, she’s someone I love having in my corner.
Full transcript of Video 7 – Interview with Maria Wallenius · Business Development
Susi: What's your name and what do you do?
Maria: My name is Maria Wallenius. I am a consulting freelancer. I do business development and sales.
Susi: Amazing. What's the best networking advice you've ever received?
Maria: Talk to people without fear. Most of the people are very nice and they will talk to you back.
Susi: Amazing. Why is it important to get good at networking?
Maria: Why is it important? Because that's how you create your networks and then you meet more people and then through that potentially even get more business.
Susi: Amazing. Thank you so much.
Sources
Epley, N., & Schroeder, J. (2014). Mistakenly seeking solitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(5), 1980–1999. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037323
Flynn, F. J., & Lake, V. K. B. (2008). If you need help, just ask: Underestimating compliance with direct requests for help. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 128–143. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.128