My business is all about getting clients focused – focused on the ideas, activities, products and customers that will get their business where they want it to go – in short, making the most of their best opportunities.  And my best clients, the ones I add most value for, are the ones who aren’t properly focused when I start working with them.

They have their sticky little fingers in pretty much every pie going, if there’s the tiniest bit of profit in it – and often even when there isn’t in reality – they’re in there.   They think of themselves as polymaths – people who are really good at loads of things – when in reality they’re what I call polybaths, as in everything ends up going down the plughole.   They flit from project to project, nearly achieving momentum on each of them, before their attention is grabbed by the next shiny new idea.

We’ve all met them, haven’t we – you find them at pretty much every networking event.  “Hi, what do you do? … Oh really, great [I’m not really interested, but I have to ask so I have the excuse to list off all the whizzy projects I’m involved in].  Well, I mainly do cork-smuggling, that’s my niche [knowing wink] but I also sell the latest thing in computing/phones/software/[insert technology here].  Oh, and I do a bit of consulting, I’m pretty good at that if you need any help with your business.  And some life coaching.  And property.  And that’s not to mention the healthy chocolate juice, do you want a second income, by the way, then you could have ‘multiple streams of [pitiful] income’ just like me!”

And they draw a deep breath, breathing having temporarily taken second place to their exposition of their incredible ‘entrepreneurialism’, and wait for you to decide which of their amazing offers you need.  Which of course, you don’t, you politely excuse yourself and go looking for some ‘open’ twos or threes.

So if these “perfect prospects” pop up at every networking event, how come I don’t pick up clients when I go networking?  Simple really – networking isn’t about “wham, bam, flog-me ma’am”, it’s about relationships.  The chances are, nobody’s going to take me on to help them get focused on our first meeting.  I need them to trust my judgement and my integrity first, and that takes a while. And our polybaths do their networking like they do their business – if it doesn’t pay off instantly, they declare “This network doesn’t work for me” and flit off to the next one.

They’re not interested in what anyone can do for them, only what they can sell, so they simply don’t take the time to understand that help really is at hand – that hand they just thrust their multi-purpose business card into!

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