“How was your summer?”, I asked as our forks hit our salads.  A friend and I were catching up over lunch.

“Very nice!”, he replied. “Katie and I toured Ireland for a couple of weeks.  Her family is Irish.  She’s always wanted to back to the ‘auld sod’… so we went and we connected with a few of her people who are still there.”

“Very nice, indeed. And, where did you go, then? And from what County did Katie’s people come?”

“Her family is from County Cork. We flew into Shannon and drove around the south west coast, over to County Cork, and then up to Dublin.”

“So, the Dingle Peninsula, the Ring of Kerry, that sort of thing?”

“Yes, we saw those, and we really had our best times when, after a couple of days, we learned to stay away from the tourists.”

“Well, that sounds simple enough. How’d you do that?”

“We went at different times or, more often, we went to different places. Without bus tour swarms behind us, we took our time, so we met a lot of terrific people.”

Well, then, and we can learn the same when we’re networking and prospecting. We can go with the usual “tourists” to the usual spots (e.g. the monthly Chamber of Commerce meetings) crowded with other sales people seeking the same people we’re seeking. Or, we use our imaginations to find different places and different reasons to meet people, take our time, and have better conversations because we’ve learned to “stay away from the tourists”.