Dump Your Elevator Pitch
Baker demonstrates simple ways to engage and connect with prospective clients and partners using a question based model. The elevator pitch gets turned on its head and instead participants practice building conversations that focus on learning about one another.
Curiosity Builds Understanding
“Changing the model from advocacy to curiosity improves the likelihood of connecting authentically.” This method is a hybrid based on the work of Dale Carnegie, Stephen Covey, and Susan RoAne.
The Fear Factor
Many people fear going into a room of strangers. Shifting from fear to excitement and curiosity, takes practice. Baker was painfully shy until she discovered how to turn the tables by asking questions of others instead of worrying about what to say about herself. People want to be heard, understood, and belong. Learning how to gently probe yields far more information than exchanging business cards and an elevator pitch between two consenting strangers.
The Art of Conversation Can Be Learned
Making connections that are meaningful is the goal and of the interactive presentation by Baker. This is more than a parlor game, it is a way of building rapport and discovering what you have in common in a fresh way.
Networking is a term that usually conjures up pictures of business cards being vomited into as many hands as possible in as short a time as possible. Cooking up connections takes a different approach.
Building Rapport
Demonstrating how you can get to know people deeply and quickly by asking questions, Baker inspires participants to have fun as they mix and mingle.
Cooking Up Connections at NARI
Judy Baker, owner of brandevines, shares tips with members of the North Bay Association of Remodelers Industry on March 5, 2013 at the Stonetree Golf Center in Novato.