Networking - Now is the time to be connected

Over the past 25 years of being in the professional world, I have always believed and practiced the art of networking. The reason for my participation in networking has been driven through my chosen profession of business development, sales and marketing. Its very basic behavior for business development people to network and as an extrovert, I have always enjoyed meeting people.

Studies show that it's far easier to close new business when you are working through established relationships and referrals compared to the opposite end of the spectrum of cold calling and starting relationships from scratch. Makes sense and also applies to any type of professional field even if you are not involved in business development like I am.

In the current economic down turn, networking and managing those contacts is more important than ever. No job or company is secure anymore and the only true security we have is the one we make and building your own security through strong networking is important.

If you are not a rainmaker, a polished networker, or extrovert type of person, let me give you some advice on how to get started and how to work on your networking skills.

Tip 1 : Use the Internet to network through social websites. The Internet is a 24 hour a day tool to keep you connected and grow your network. There are more than 250,000 social sites on the Internet today. You can find general social networks to networks for every type of interest. Here are a few examples.

www.facebook.com
www.myspace.com
www.linkedin.com


Tip 2 : Make a goal to add one new networking connection each week. In a year's time you will have another 52 connections that will be able to help you in your life and connect you to thousands of other people. Do this by inviting others to your network. In a decade you will have more than 500 new connections of people in your personal network and if everyone you network with does the same, you will have connections to millions of people. Do the math...

Tip 3: Make connections with your network each day. Just like muscle, if you don't use your network, it begins a process of atrophy. Reach out and send a brief communication to someone in your network each day. There are so many ways of being connected these days that a text message, phone call, email, write on someones social page, or the best and most effective approach, share a meal or a coffee with someone each day. The important thing is the communications don't have to be about business and the best ones usually are not. We all have birthdays, anniversaries and other life events to discuss and say hello. It's important to to just be a friend, a fellow human being who is walking the planet.

Tip 4: Get a contact management system of some sort to help you manage your network. I use two tools, my handheld blackberry and Microsoft Outlook. With over 18,000 names in my contact data base, it's impossible to remember birthdays, anniversaries, spouse names, children's names and other important tid bits of information. If you are in a business where you are in a sales role, you will certainly want to use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to help you manage contacts that also have revenue tied to them. In this information based world we live in, we were all given the best computer in the world at birth, our brains, but must of us can not remember everything we want, so use tools.

Tip 5: Develop of love of people when you network. I know this may not come natural for many people but neither is lifting weights, reading, riding a bike or just about every other activity we partake in each day because they are learned behaviors. For example sake, I love to read bibliographies because the they are the stories of people's lives. By reading the pages of a bibliography, one gets to see the challenges a person has overcome, the events and people who have shaped their lives, etc. I realize 99% of the people I meet will never have a bibliography written about them, so I look at everyone as a walking bibliography. Each one of them is an interesting story in some fashion and it's a blast to learn about them. Each interaction with a person is a page or snippet from their virtual bibliography. By developing a love of people and sincere desire to learn more about them, you wont come off as a phony or insencear.

Like any other learned activity, networking is a learned skill. You don't have to be a super connector to make your life enriched by networking. In 2009, times are tough and you will want to make sure you are well connected and create your own personal security.

In the past week, I made 13 new network connections, did you get just one?

Expect more, do more, be more...

Rex