Networking and Professional Relationship Articles

The following articles provide some hard won insights into the networking strategies, tactics and philosophy of Schmooze's founder, Phillip Jones. He is also the director of Two Degrees Group, which provides a range of consulting services including tailored on-demand professional development workshops, discrete professional intermediary services and the design, and the development and management of professional networks for organisations. 

He can also be engaged to develop a bespoke networking strategy for individuals and organisations and runs master classes on professional relations.

He is often invited to deliver workshops on a range professional communication topics and strategies, as well as a being a guest speaker for a range of organisations on professional networking. You can also visit his personal website at www.phillipajones.com.

Comments: We welcome your feedback and suggestions for future articles- email him. 

• Networking Strategies, Part 1
• Networking Strategies, Part 2
• Networking as Part of Your Communication and Marketing Strategy 

Other Articles in PDF Format

• Heading South- how to stop things going wrong PDF 
• What is Networking? PDF
• Hello, What's Your Name? PDF
• Networking to Foster Future Opportunities PDF
• Online Networking as an Effective Tool  PDF
• Building Momentum in your Professional Relationships PDF
• Finding a Networking Role Model PDF
• A Way of Seeing the World PDF
• Networking isn't a Dirty Word PDF

Stop Playing Russian Roulettte with your Networking

This article was first published as a guest blog on the invitation of Uber Global.

“I know what networking is”, I hear you say, but do you know how to use to use it in a systematic way that will drive your business forward in a competitive market? When I use the term ‘networking’, I include all engagement with clients, prospective clients and the general market place, whether in the real world, or online.

It’s an ongoing process, not an event, and too often that process is ad hoc and the opportunities and contacts made are left to chance.

For most professionals, networking generally falls into one of three categories:

• Something you do already and don’t need to think much about, and you reckon you pretty much have it covered (sure about that?)
• Something someone else in your organisation (such as your sales/marketing team or BDM) does (whilst you get on the with the real work)
• Something that’s on your to-do list if you had the time to spare (you’re busy now, but what will happen in 3 months’ time …how’s your pipeline looking?)

What’s common to all these attitudes is the hit and miss approach to what can be the most powerful way to drive revenue and corporate reputation. Most all companies have a communications/marketing strategy, an online presence (including social media), a business plan, training schedules and a contacts database.

But where is the networking strategy to pull all that together into a coherent whole? Consider all the time, effort and money invested in all the events and associations your company takes part in: are they supporting your corporate goals? What’s the return on that investment?

Take a moment to reflect on why online networking sites are so popular. LinkedIn recently passed the 2 million user mark in Australia, and Facebook is the size of a large country in terms of population. It is clear that people want to connect, and connect meaningfully. We’re all busy people, but in my opinion real change, trust and rapport only happen in the real world.

People, after all, still want to do transactions with entities they like and trust, and that entity could be an individual or a brand. So, whilst an online networking presence is both efficient and de rigueur, you still want to aim for real world outcomes.

To ensure your team are engaging externally effectively, and that you are leveraging all your company’s tools, a networking strategy should look at the following:

• What you are trying to achieve through your networking. Is it for market intelligence? Perhaps to create a new market, or improve the understanding of your services, or perhaps to put a face to your company name in the market place.
• How those goals align with your company/marketing/business development goals.
• What resources of time, staff and money you are willing to invest? In many instances your current contacts may be able to help you, but you have never looked at them in the light of a future champion for your company or client.
• What are your performance measures? Define metrics on a 3, 6 and 12 month timeline.
• Aime for a systematic process, both online and offline that are mutually supporting.
• Ensuring all your team are skilled up appropriately with an internal means to share contacts, market intelligence and communications.
• Identifying those events, groups and forums that are most likely to attract your target contacts.

Finally, you should divide your activities into three broad categories:

• Maintaining your current clients
• Cultivating new clients
• Expanding the market for all or part of your company’s offering

All of the above is not rocket science, but you need to be systematic in order to identify and exploit the opportunities that come your way as a result. Don’t leave the results of your efforts to chance.

A networking strategy will go a long way in ensuring that your team and online tools are not only creating new contacts, raising your company profile, gathering market intelligence and in turn improving the bottom line.

Networking Strategies PART 1

People will generally want to deal with people they know and trust- in the world of marketing and sales the power of word of mouth is well established. Networking is the most cost effective way to leverage information and to market expertise, products and services.

By building credibility one person at a time a person you can create ambassadors that will champion your message on you behalf. In a sense, networking is a form of insurance, both personally and professionally. The favours you pay forward now you can cash in times of need.

But too often the process of networking is left to chance, and people join the wrong networks or attend the wrong events for who they want to meet. Also - its vital that your networking activity is align to your business goals and plans, not left to its own devices!

Without a strategy with some clearly defined goals and a timeline to go with that, you are liable to misplace your investment in time, effort and money.

So upfront you need a game plan before anything else:

Key Networking Steps

1. What are your networking goals and what strategy will you might employ to achieve them. How can you get there?
2. Conduct a networking contact audit: Ask yourself, who do you know? What or who do they know? Determine their potential relevance to your goals and ask yourself ‘do they know what you know?’
3. Identify what other networks and contacts there are that might serve your goals and conduct research on them, ask around for different perspectives to determine their potential value.
4. Subscribe to several email lists to receive event invites, sample a range of events and then determine which networks you will invest in long term.
5. Join up, become a regular and start the process of cultivating your contacts, raising your profile and take opportunities to contribute to the networks success- keep your momentum up.
6. Determine which networks and contacts you will invest your efforts into and get busy!
7. Continually review the value of your contacts, keep the momentum up and invest in them accordingly, cultivate your contacts, keep you ears and eyes open for opportunities! Remember to ‘pay it forward’.
8. Review your successes against your goals and adjust your strategies accordingly- give it time to pay off.
   
   Its vital that you should establish a clear idea about why you are networking and your objectives: is it for a promotion, access, intelligence, profile, marketing or building up a database of contacts? 

Examples of Strategic Approaches

The Portfolio

• This strategy is to cultivate contacts across a wide range of sectors, including key ones like the media, professional associations, government etc.
• By developing a wide-ranging database you are establishing a long term asset you can tap into when required and ensure that as many people know about you and expertise.
• The downside of this method is that its harder to have lots of high-value contacts and to maintain them all.

In-Depth

• This strategy is useful for a particular project (eg a tender), research, or if a particular organisations or sector is very important to you.
• Your activity is targeted at developing multiple contacts and raising your profile within a defined sector or organisation.
• This strategy is also useful when looking for a job!
• With this strategy you are seeking multiple contacts within the same organisation or sector and ideally, some high value contacts or champions.
• A champion is someone who can spread the word about your expertise and boosts your reputation and that of your organisation.

Virtual

• ‘E’ or virtual-networking will never replace human interaction, but there are several internet based networking options that provide both an active and passive means to network.
• Websites such as LinkedIn, facebook etc provide the means to connect virtually with existing or potential contacts globally, promote your expertise and keep up to date with changes in their contact details.
• Its also very useful in doing background research on contacts, comments on others experiences of groups and of course to promote your expertise such as a blog, e-newsletter or wiki that provides an insight or demonstrates your expertise.
• Schedule regular cycles of contact for certain contacts depending on their value in your calendar as recurring events. For example, a high value or ‘hot’ contacts a month- face to face coffee or meeting, other contacts you can send an email or text or call every couple of months
• Keep a record of your information on each contact and your activity in your database or Outlook contacts.

Some final tips to think about:

• Determine the value of your contact early on- don't waste your time or theirs, and certainly don’t hit on a contact for information until you are confident that you have a good working relationship- certainly not on the first meeting.
• Aim to develop multiple 'touch-points' (aka contacts) within an organisation, so research your contacts and networks, so aim to find the key networkers within an organisation or a network build a relationship and they can network on your behalf.
• Organisational charts only tell you so much, aim to find the real people ‘gateways’ or decision makers in an organisation.
• Determine how much time, money and effort you are prepared to invest in your strategy and be patient. Give the strategy time to take effect it takes time to build trust and confidence.
• Be open minded, if someone comes to you with an idea, see how it can fit into your plans and goals, and maybe a win-win can come out of it.

back to top

Networking Strategies, Part II

Word of Mouth – using the Buzz
With this strategy you are aiming to get others to deliver some key messages on your behalf. This might be part of a marketing campaign, or to reinforce some messages you want to get out to persuade some key stakeholders around to your point of view.

Here are some key steps:

• Determine a few key messages to communicate – stick to them use true stories that are simple and easy to repeat.
• Cultivate key influencers who can spread the word (eg professional associations) that are in your target sector.
• Mobilise colleagues to spread the word, both face to face and online (eg websites) at the peer to peer level
• Deploy newsletters and emails to reinforce the messages

Internal Networking- Leveraging the Water Cooler/ Coffee Break
Internal networking is the networking you do within the organisation you work in. It can be just as powerful as the traditional ‘external form. The person sitting in the next cubicle can be a doorway into a range of contacts and knowledge that might be very useful.

Don't assume you know someeone or their contacts because you've worked with them a while, often our patterns of behaviour become 'routine' at work and we don't get below the surface of our colleagues.

One model is establish small groups based on similar work-types or a project and meet a few times a month to share contacts and industry news. These networks are aimed at sharing information, leads, contacts and capitalising on the intellectual assets of an organisations staff beyond their roles in a collaborative network.

This strategy can be combined with a virtual model (eg a Wiki) to share knowledge that others can leverage of and don’t underestimate the power of just asking someone a question and then another!

The Decision-Maker-Opening the doors
This strategy is all about cultivating those people within an organisation that call the shots.  Depending on what you are seeking to achieve you may target the marketing or communications manager or the Director, Deputy Secretary or CEO.

Generally you match the level of the target contact with the person doing the contacting- it’s a peer to peer approach. People generally are more comfortable in dealing with people at their professional level.  This strategy requires research and cultivation of contacts lower down the organisations rungs, and work your way up, especially if you are using this strategy over the short-term.

If you take the long-term view, especially if you are starting your networking career, the contacts you make now will one day be decision makers (including you!) so it pays to get busy now and cultivate them in a systematic way. The introductions to the target contacts are best done by those contacts you’ve made whom you have a good relationship with.

Keep in mind that these people are BUSY, you have to ensure you've done your research about them and their organisation, and get to the point fast. You are aiming to be relevant to them, so your pitch has to be spot on- you get one shot.

Collaborative- the Win-Win
This is where you work together with one or more contacts and organisations for a common cause. The collaboration may be with another department or another part of your organisation.

The networking partnership could be a one-off project or an ongoing partnership- formal or otherwise. It is very important that there is a clear understanding about the objectives and who will contribute what to the networking project.

This can also be a way of networking where you’ve a few networking buddies from different organisations looking out for leads, information and opportunities for each other, each going to different events, or part of different sectors where there is potential for synergies.

Collaborative networking can also be useful in determining the value of a potential networking event (have your colleagues been there and what do they think?) or a new contact.

back to top

Networking as Part of Your Communication and Marketing Strategy

In this article I’m going to explore the use of networking as a channel of communication or marketing. Just so you know, by ‘networking’ I am referring to the cultivation of professional relationships, and the engagement of professional bodies or events in a systematic way to influence change and perception.

Networking Is Not an Option!
Networking is often taken for granted or is felt to be an optional activity, its something you do after hours if you have the energy, time, or the venue is interesting enough, but its rarely seen as core business.

Yet, most business opportunities, market intelligence and potential partnerships come from meeting the right people- so staying back in the office may clear your in-box but what about what’s coming down your pipeline next month? Each event represents an opportunity to meet new potential clients (after all they could’ve gone elsewhere): and you’re going to say no to that?!

Perhaps its that networking takes time to pay off (obviously you rarely get a sale on the spot) that its not given the priority I argue that it should. Yet in business you are always projecting into the future and the cultivation of networks and profile through them is the most targeted means to keep that quality work coming in.

Networking works outwardly too. The same time you are seeking to bring in new leads, information contacts and business opportunities, you are also cultivating potential champions for your message, your brand, your expertise.

If you are looking for a new widget maker, do you ask the widget maker for an opinion about his work, mmmm- no, but you’ll ask a friend or colleague about a good widget maker….those referrals are gold. But again they take time and trust to come to fruition, and yes your company has to be good at what you do!

What’s The Plan?
In the same way networking is sometimes seen as outside core business, its often the orphan child of a marketing/communication or promotional strategy. Each professional/networking event or organisation represents a defined audience. Do they match who you want to reach or can be a pathway to do so? Almost certainly.

Your networking efforts should be aligned to your plan- both strategically and tactically and reviewed in that context. In short, decide what you are trying to achieve and ensure you are investing your time in those environments that are most likely to pay off.

What’s the level of contact you want to engage with? Are their sponsorship opportunities to raise your profile? Aim to work constructively with the organisation and you can shape the opportunity to mutual benefit.

I suggest three months in a given circle should be sufficient to determine the longer term prospects and you should aim to have some tangible goals to measure success against- after all, it’s a significant investment of time and energy.

Again, effective networking is a process, not an event- so you need to keep the momentum up and maintain visibility.

Mobilising the Masses
Networking is often the province of the face of the company: the boss, the client relations manager, sales, BDM – the usual suspects in short. They are told to get ‘out there’ and bring home the bacon. Fair enough- if they know their game, they’ll be systematic about their investment of time, follow-up the right leads and choose which events/groups to participate in appropriately.

But are you confident that all this activity is focused in the right direction, or is aligned to your business goals? Do you have a new campaign to promote a new service or product? Alternately you may want to prepare the ground for a new initiative, but cultivating contacts in certain sectors and organisations so when you are ready you can roll out to a sympathetic and targeted audience.

What is less usual is the empowering of all the staff to be ambassadors for your company. In the same way you can cultivate champions or fans for what you do (satisfied clients/stakeholders are very special and should be treated as the best form of promotion you’ve got) your team can also be equipped to assist in getting your message out or finding pathways to communicate through.

Given that every team member has their own networks, be it social or professional, harnessing those pathways can be an effective approach as long as you keep the messages and call to action straightforward.

After all its not their core business, and you want to keep the team ‘on-message’ but if they are better equipped to describe what their company does, they’ll feel more confident about talking about it (the so called BBQ scenario) or being more active in supporting an initiative like a charity drive.

Note, there are risks associated with this approach- staff may resist being dragooned into something they thing ‘sales dept’ should be doing, or don’t want work impinging on their private time. You can also run afoul of your brand being exposed as a fraud with staff saying how great your new widget is on facebook, only for people to discover they work for you…. Not a good look.

So my advice is to give them the tools to describe succinctly what you do well and leave the rest to the experts.

The Take Home
Networking is core business to:

• Raise your profile and stay visible
• Gather market intelligence
• Cultivate new leads and contacts
• Maintain existing relationships and foster champions
• Keep momentum up
• Get your message out to target audiences as part of a strategy.

Be clear about your message:

• Adopt the approach to suit the audience
• Mobilise your team beyond the traditional networking players
• Keep it real.

back to top