Effective Networking Is Underrated
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “Your network is your net worth.” Whether it was Tim Sanders who said it first or Porter Gale, it’s true: Your network is everything you’ve got.
Your network will pick you up when you are down.
Your network will help you get a job if you lose yours. It’ll deliver the introduction that delivers your sale.
When you treat your network right, it can do amazing things for you.
It’ll even work miracles: sometimes it will help one of your friends get a job.
But there are times in our lives when we need a new network.
When we outgrow ours.
When we move cities or industries, and our old network doesn’t make sense anymore.
So let’s pretend we have to do build our business network – from scratch. Because in 2015, I did. I left Milwaukee after 19 years of building my network, and I had to start completely over, in Tampa, Florida.
So we’re going to start by designing a network that matters over the long haul.
In networking: consistency is currency.
First, Understand Some Important Truths About Networking.
We’re designing a network for a business purpose. That doesn’t mean we’re going to be transactional automatons. It does mean we need to be intentional about building our network.
A few quick networking rules to follow:
Consistency is your core currency: You gotta show up in small doses over a long period of time to make everything work.
It’s not always equal in networking: There will be times when someone in your network is critical to your business, but you aren’t critical to your network. Take the long view and play the long game, and don’t have an ego about any of this stuff.
Not all relationships will deliver equally: Every person is important but not every relationship will deliver equal results to you. You gotta prioritize the most important ones and still cover the rest.
You need people at different career and influence levels in your network: You’ll need people that are up and coming. You need established people in your network. A robust and balanced network will be durable and serve you for a long time.
People change roles over time: Sometimes someone will become more important to you, other times less important.
You have to maintain your relationships: Sometimes you have to do all the work to have and maintain good relationships. Don’t get bothered by that, it’s the cost of having a valuable business network.
When you build a network you have to design it to fit what you want, and prime it to be ready to respond to you.
The Bullseye Approach: How To Design Your Network
I think of my network as a group of three concentric circles, like a bullseye. The closer in you get, the more valuable those relationships are. You spend the most energy on the inside of the network, and you usually get the most out of the “inner” layers, but the outer layers protect things, can be developed, and can move inside to a more inner layer.
Core: 24x: 5-15 key people in your business
Since 2010, I’ve owned a sales and marketing consulting business. Over that period, we did millions of dollars in sales. But almost forty-five percent of the total business could be traced back to just 5 relationships that we had formed early in our business and nearly seventy percent can be traced back to 10 relationships.
And, 3 of those 5 relationships came from the same referral source early on.
That isn’t an outlier. It’s the normal way good business networks work.
In the middle of the group is the “core” group.
These are the most important people in your network. Your crew, the folks that you’ll serve and that will serve you. Now, we’ve put “24x” by your core.
Your core group must be fairly small.
Remember: There were only 5 Spice Girls. Six Goonies. Jesus had 12 Apostles.
There are only 15 players on an NBA basketball team. So your “core” doesn’t need to be big.
I’d make an effort to include in this group:
Dream prospects: People you’ve always wanted to work with, life-changing businesses.
Industry Influencers: People that can offer true influence to you.
Complimentary Companies (i.e. if you’re Realtor, have a Lender, if you’re a Tax Attorney, have a CPA).
Crew: 8x: 15-50 Key People
The next part of your network is a little bigger. It’s not as dense, but you’ll still get good business results from energy spent in this group.
It’s also where your “future” core group will come from, and when a “core” relationship runs its course, it’s where the people default to.
People to look to include in your inner ring:
Current & Past Customers: Current and past customers can come from this group.
Rising stars: it’s always fun to help people on their way up.
Indirect Competitors: When someone is a commercial Realtor, and you do residential, this might be a good fit.
Vendors & Suppliers: Your key suppliers. Good businesses treat suppliers like family.
Media and Bloggers: You want to make sure you have media and bloggers in your industry in your network. Both folks who are in your geographic locale, as well as people in the industry you serve. This is generally a good place to place them.
Community: 2x: 50-250 People
I think of the community as “incubating people to go deep with someday.” It’s always good to have people that you’re staying in touch with deliberately.
The idea here is to build connections with a lot of people for the future. Because, if you plan on being in business in the future you’ll need to connect with people later. And you want to have a good supply of people that you’ve helped out over the course of your life. This is your “community.”
Again, we’re deliberately interacting with our network. This bears fruit over the long haul. It takes 12-15 minutes a day, 5 days a week but that secures your business and your future.
There are other benefits, too. The biggest one is that you become a leader when you take charge of your community.
Sometimes you’ll make them into customers. Sometimes they’ll be your friends. Sometimes, nothing will happen.
This group should include:
Leads that didn’t quite convert.
Vendors/ People that you almost hired.
Random people that you meet at business networking functions – and hit it off with.
A Network Checklist
Since we are designing a network to serve us, we want to think in terms of things that it should have in it.
First, we’ll want to have one or two of every vendor in our industry. This means, if we’re a residential plumber, we’d want to have at least one of every trade that works on a house, preferably at different price points. If we’re a financial planner, we’d want to ensure a full list of tax, real estate and insurance professionals in our network.
How (And How Often) to Contact These People
Now, each of our groups of people includes a title as well as a number after.
The title is how we think of them.
The number is how many times a year we contact them.
This means we’ll be touching our core group at least twice a month.
Most CRMs have an easy way to figure out who you have contacted and when.
Contacting your network is a different task. We want to add value and not be a pest.
Closing Thoughts
We do most of the work. A network doesn’t maintain itself. We do the work and put the time in. Our network is something we manage for us. We do it at work and in our career, but the work belongs to and benefits us.
It’s in addition to our CRM work, lead follow-up, prospecting, and our direct sales efforts. The idea is that the network belongs to us, the prospecting work belongs to our company.
The reason it’s there is because things change. We may have to switch companies or industries. The more people that we are kind to over the long haul, the more options we accrue.
This can be done in 15 minutes a day or less – once you get the hang of it.
Is your business worth 15 minutes a day?