By: Bert Zethof

Many years ago, before the Internet, I took courses and bought books about how to sell. I learned about the techniques of prospecting, qualifying prospects, closing the sale, and so forth. Certain techniques, used responsibly, are still valid. However, in the new world, selling that is “pushy” has lost favour.

One of the resources I bought was a cassette tape (I’m dating myself) by Zig Ziglar, a sales guru. A comment of his has stuck with me and I believe it is as relevant in the online world as it is in the offline world:

"You can get everything in life you want, if you can just help enough other people get what they want."

The timelessness of this advice was driven home for me when I came across a gem of a video clip of Seth Godin, arguably the savviest marketer today. I provide a transcript of his comments below with all credit to Seth. Seth answers the question:

"Is social networking important for business?

There’s two kinds of networking. There’s the networking of giving out your business card to lots of people, showing up to a lot cocktail parties, friending a lot of people on Facebook, and counting how many people follow you on Twitter. That’s worthless. It’s worthless in the real world and it’s worthless in the online world.

The networking that matters is helping people achieve their goals. Doing it reliably and repeatedly so that over time people have an interest in helping people to achieve their goals because they have a stake in it. You can do it offline by helping people, by referring people, by setting people up, and by teaching people. And you can do it online by leading a tribe, by connecting people, by giving people access to information and research they need. Because then, over time, they’ll do the same for you.

You’re not doing it for the punch line, you’re doing it because the act of doing it is so beneficial. What I really don’t like online is the superficial networking where all the thousands of people are friending everyone else. Why? It doesn’t count for anything. It’s just a waste of time."

So, to those of you who I (Bert) barely know who have invited me to become professional "friends" online, I apologize for not following through with your invitation. The contacts in my personal network have to be meaningful; they have to be based on a relationship that we have developed – if they’re not, then my network is of no worth at all.