T2 - Your Discovery Call with people you know

The objectives of your Discovery call is to have a conversation with people you know who:

(1) You think you’d like to have as part of your team and
(2) You think could be prepared to invest some time in building their networks

It is essential to understand that the purpose of your call is not to sell joining the Connect Collaborative. Instead, the call is to discover how important network building is to your candidate. If network building is important to them, suggest meeting like-minded others by attending a CC Intro Session.

If your candidate asks questions, by all means, go into more detail. If not, let them know they’ll learn a lot more by attending a CC intro session and that it’s not a sell as we only want people on board who want to participate.

Most importantly, don’t plan to spend too much time on your Discovery call. Allocate a set amount of time to the call (say half an hour) and try to stick with it. One of the best ways to do this is to send your candidate a message such as the following:

Hi George, It’s a while since we caught up!
Would you be up for a quick Zoom catchup?
If so, please pick a time that works for you using the following link.

Ask Questions

Good questions are very powerful.
In particular, good questions allow you to direct the conversation so that you can gather enough information to decide the next best steps.

We highly recommend getting into the habit of writing down good questions that work well for you.

Following are some examples:

We haven’t caught up for a while; what are you up to?
What are you looking to achieve over the next year?
This year, I’m keen to amp up my network building activities; how about you?
How much of your business has come from others advocating for you or referring people to you?

What are the possible outcomes of your Discovery call?

Having spoken with your candidate, you may decide that you do NOT want to invite them to a CC Intro Session.

Possible reasons for this are:

You feel they are not someone who you would want as part of your team.
Timing is not good for them right now - you are just not getting a good vibe from them at the moment.
You have discovered that they are Takers rather than Givers.
You feel their current focus on immediate transactions means they are unlikely to dedicate any time to building relationships for longer-term benefits.

If you don’t want to invite a candidate to a CC Intro Session, it is very easy to gracefully end the call with a positive message such as:

“George, it’s been so good catching up. We must not leave it so long till we catch up again. In the meantime, I’ll keep my ears and eyes open for anyone I think would benefit from your service…”

On the other hand, if you feel your candidate is keen to increase their network building activities and you’d like them as part of your team, the next step is to invite them to a CC intro session.

If your candidate has responded to your questions indicating that they are keen to build their network, you could progress your candidate with a conversation that goes something like this:

“I couldn’t agree more, George! You are so right! In the end, none of us can easily sell ourselves. So the aim of the game has to be to build trust with others who will genuinely advocate for us.

Interestingly, I have just recently started working with a group of people taking precisely this approach, and I can see some great things coming out of it. We are following a process that teaches us how to build our networks alongside others doing the same. Our goal is to create advocacy not only in our own teams but also between teams.

The result is fast growth which creates greater opportunity for all of us.
The group is called the Connect Collaborative.
Would you like to meet some of the people I’m working with and find out a bit more about how we build our networks together?”

The CC Intro session is a part of every workshop.
It may be that your candidate is keen but has a regular commitment at the times our Workshops are held.
The reality is that our workshops are a significant part of the value of belonging to the CC.

In some cases, your candidate will see great value in building a team of team-building advocates and will be prepared to move other regular commitments to attend a CC intro session. If not, look for another candidate who can attend.

Inviting as many good candidates as possible to attend each CC intro session is an excellent use of your time. At the same time your candidates are attending the CC intro session and experiencing the workshop’s atmosphere; you can participate in other workshop sessions.

It works especially well for you to book a follow-up session while you are booking your candidate into the CC intro session. It’s ideal to secure the follow-up for immediately after the workshop.

You must book your candidate into a CC intro session using the CC Calendly booking system.

There are several reasons for this:

(1) Depending on the number of people attending at the time of the Workshop, we can decide how many breakout CC intro sessions we will need to accommodate the number of guests that have been invited.

(2) Your guest will be sent a confirmation email from the CC containing some more information. They will also be sent a reminder email and a reminder SMS, greatly increasing their likelihood of attending.

(3) You can include a link to your guests’ LinkedIn profile and any additional information that may help the facilitator interact with them.

There is an excellent explanation of how to use Calendly to book your guest in for a CC Intro session in the next topic of this workshop (click the topic to access the web page, which has detailed screenshots).