Here is something I learned knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors: the people who give the most win the most. Not sometimes. Every time.
Most people walk into a room thinking about what they can get. Who can help me? Who can buy from me? Who can introduce me to somebody? That energy is loud, and everybody feels it. Nobody wants to be around it.
The best connectors I know walk in thinking the opposite. Who can I help? Who can I introduce? What does this person need that I can give freely?
The best connectors give first — and everybody remembers it.
Here is the part nobody tells you: giving is not charity. It is strategy. When you give without keeping score, three things happen.
First, you become memorable. Most people are forgettable because they are interchangeable. The person who helped without being asked? You remember that person forever.
Second, you build trust at speed. Trust normally takes months. A genuine act of giving compresses that timeline to minutes. People do business with people they trust, and trust is the real currency.
Give without keeping score. It always comes back.
Third, it comes back. Not always from the person you helped. Sometimes it comes back from three directions you never expected. That is just how it works. The universe keeps better books than you do.
So stop keeping score. Give the introduction. Share the contact. Answer the question. Help the new person. Do it because it is who you are, not because you are running a calculation.
The givers always end up with the biggest networks, the deepest relationships, and the most open doors. I have watched it happen for thirty years. It never fails.
Robert Blakely, The Blakester — Sales Psychology Coach, Founder of The Lost Transition.