Top sales and marketing speaker, John Hall explains how to develop habits that focus on engaging your audience, create meaningful relationships, and deliver value consistently, day in and day out.
Is the way you work with others making you more money? Increasing the value of your brand? Helping you get more work done? If the answer to all of those questions isn’t a firm “yes,” you need to shift your strategy.
In my book Top of Mind, I outline the methods I’ve used to get where I am today. I realized early on in my career that traditional networking methods weren’t getting me where I wanted to be, so I rewrote my rules for connecting with other people. As I’ve been around more guest speakers, I’ve seen a lot of alignment of their content with the goal of engaging people to result in lasting trust.
Learning how to properly employ a top-of-mind mentality changed the way I do business. Dealing with your network the right way can pay off big in the future — here’s how you can use those same strategies to increase your productivity.
Setting Yourself Up for Success
The people you know and work with aren’t there to be used, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t useful to you. Far too often, people in business only consider the value of their network when they need help with something. Behavior like that leads to an overall decrease in trust and less willingness to help others out. It can ultimately (and ironically) make it harder for you to get things done.
A top-of-mind mentality means doing what you can to constantly become the first thing that comes to people’s minds when they think of leaders in your sector or niche. No one achieves that level of prominence without hard work in creating lasting personal connections. When you meet with others, always prioritize what you can do to set them up for success over the short or long term. A true network isn’t one built on LinkedIn connections or alumni gatherings — it’s a group of people whom you’re willing to help and who will help you in return.
Getting More Done
OK, so you do favors for others and others do favors for you — how does that make you more productive? First and foremost, it’s not about “favors.” It’s about helping others out to establish meaningful connections that result in lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.
Putting the success of those important to you at the forefront of your mind is naturally going to help you be more productive. We can’t achieve what we do without the assistance of others, so constantly considering others’ needs leads to better collaboration. Maintaining that kind of mentality will cause others to think of you above all others when new and exciting opportunities appear.
Highly valuing others’ success is what I do. When I co-founded Calendar, I made sure to incorporate a feature for schedule sharing so I could always stay current on the lives of the people most important to me. As someone who places a high value on people, I find that making sure others achieve what they need and want to achieve is naturally going to be good for me as well. When those critical to my success — and my business’s — get more work done, it’s the same as me getting more work done, too.
I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for the help and guidance of others. In the same way that I do what I can to promote the success of those who helped me get established, I work to build others up, knowing it will lead to a long and fruitful professional relationship down the line.
Staying top of mind for others isn’t about being the most famous or successful figure in your field; it means making sure others know how far your influence and guidance can lead them. Being more productive means getting others doing the right work and sending you the right work in turn — and a top-of-mind mentality can help you get there.
