The short answer
I do not collect contacts, I create obligations of goodwill. Find out what someone is trying to do and help with it before you ever mention what you need. A network is the accumulated record of who you have made more successful.
In full
Most networking is two people describing themselves in turn and exchanging cards that go nowhere.
The useful version is quieter. Ask what they are working on and what is hard about it. Listen for the gap you can close with an introduction, a document, or a name.
Then close it within forty-eight hours, without asking for anything.
Do that thirty times a year for five years and you will have a network no advertising budget can buy.
From experience
The most valuable relationship of my career started because I introduced two people who had nothing to do with me. Neither transaction involved me at all. Years later, one of them brought me the largest opportunity I have ever been offered.
Common mistake
Treating a room as a place to extract from rather than a place to deposit into. Extraction is memorable for the wrong reasons.
Do this next
- Step 1
At the next event, ask only what someone is working on and what is hard about it.
- Step 2
Send one useful thing within forty-eight hours, with no ask attached.
- Step 3
Keep a simple record of who you have helped and revisit it quarterly.
Questions
- When can you finally ask for something?
- When you have made enough deposits that the ask feels natural to them, not just to you.
- Do events still matter?
- Rooms matter less than follow-through. A weak room worked properly beats a strong room wasted.
By Robert T Fletcher