Leveraging The Law Of Familiarity To Build A Profitable Network
Have you ever noticed how a song that you didn’t like at first, “grows on you” after you’ve heard it a few times? That is the Law Of Familiarity at work. In 1980 a psychologist named Robert Zajonc demonstrated something called the “mere-exposure” effect. In a nutshell, his findings were that the more you are exposed to something, the more likely you are to have a good feeling about it. I remember when I first started college, I received a “dorm starter kit”. Which was basically, just a box of personal products. The box was packed with shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste. Interestingly, I still use many of the products today. Now I understand what those marketers knew so many years ago. That all things being equal, a person will choose the products that they are most familiar with.
This effect not only works with songs and products, but it also works with people. Imagine being in a room full of strangers, when someone you know walks in. The first thing you will do is greet them and have a conversation. What’s so interesting, is that you will do this even if you two are not particularly close outside of this setting. He or she is simply more familiar than others in the room. This is an important concept to understand when you network. And particularly when you when following up.
You may have heard the phrase, “The fortune is in the follow-up”. While the phrase is often used, most don’t understand the implications behind it. When many people think of “following up”, they think of making one call to ask for the sale or job. In reality, the reason for following up is to build familiarity. Think about how advertising works. Advertisers play the same ad several times so their message breaks through. In effect, every time you touch base with one of your contacts, you are doing the same thing.
Like advertisements, your job with each impression isn’t to sell. It’s to create a sense of familiarity. Advertisers want to create a feeling that doing business with them, is the right thing to do because you know them. I used to wonder why pharmaceutical companies would place ads during primetime shows since I couldn’t buy their products even if I wanted to. Then I went to a doctor’s appointment. When she recommended a medicine that I had seen advertised, I felt somewhat comforted. Like the middle-aged guy walking his dog wouldn’t possibly let anything bad happen to me.
How does this work? The human brain has to do so much, so quickly, that it needs to develop shortcuts to help you respond to information or stimuli. These shortcuts are called heuristics. There are a few different types of heuristics the brain uses to make sense of the world. One of these is called the availability heuristic. This shortcut saves brain cycles by grabbing the most recent memory of a person, item, or situation to help you judge how to react. So by making sure that the last memory a person has about your product or service involves you, it makes it more likely that you get the call.
Additionally, by making frequent contact you are leveraging the “mere-exposure” effect. That’s why it is so important to have a system in place to keep in touch. I recommend having some type of CRM (Contact Relationship Management) system to stay organized. With a CRM system, you enter the contact, add other details of your conversation, how often you want to connect, and let the system do the work. You can also use a free app like google calendar. It’s a bit more work, but the important part is that you have some type of reminder system so that contacts don’t slip through the cracks and go cold.
