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NETWORKING IN THE 21ST CENTURY…FOR SALES PROFESSIONALS:

WHY YOUR NETWORK SUCKS AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

By

David J.P. Fisher

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A RockStar Publishing Book

Copyright ©2016 David J.P. Fisher

All Rights Reserved

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by RockStar Publishing, Evanston, Illinois.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

without written permission from the publisher. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy

of copyrighted material in violation of the author’s rights.

Cover Design by: Debbie O’Byrne & JetLaunch

Library of Congress Control Number:

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-944730-03-1

ISBN E-Book: 978-1-944730-04-8

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For Declan, MC2, Conor, Libby, Ollie,

Benjamin, Jacob, CJ, and Jackson.

Eventually you’ll need this book, but for now

the only sales skills you need are a smile and a hug.

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Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 6

Get More Information Online ....................................................................................................................... 9

Section 1 – Why Networking Matters......................................................................................................... 10

How 21st Century Networking Changed the Sales World ....................................................................... 11

What the Heck is Networking? ............................................................................................................... 17

Why Have We Sucked at Networking? ................................................................................................... 21

Section 2 – Cultivate a Strategic Approach ................................................................................................ 27

Invest in Yourself First ............................................................................................................................. 28

Develop Your Social Savvy ...................................................................................................................... 33

Embrace Technology the Right Way ....................................................................................................... 38

Act as a Profersonal™ Professional ......................................................................................................... 43

Section 3 –Action Steps for “Un-Sucking” Your Network ........................................................................ 48

Meet Our Fearless Hero .......................................................................................................................... 49

Tactic 1 – Creating a Plan ........................................................................................................................ 52

Jaime’s Plan for Success ...................................................................................................................... 56

Tactic 2 – Planting a Flag ......................................................................................................................... 58

Jaime the Expert in Digital Transformation for Business Success ....................................................... 61

Tactic 3 – Crafting an Intriguing Elevator Speech ................................................................................... 63

Jaime’s Introduction............................................................................................................................ 66

Tactic 4 – Balancing Relationships with Selling ....................................................................................... 67

Jaime Finds a New Balance ................................................................................................................. 71

Tactic 5 – Asking for Introductions and Opportunities ........................................................................... 73

Jaime Leverages His Network ............................................................................................................. 76

Tactic 6 - Talking Less, Connecting More…with Questions ..................................................................... 78

Jaime Becomes a Serial “Dater” .......................................................................................................... 81

Tactic 6.5 – Karma: Connections & Contributions .................................................................................. 83

Tactic 7 – Courting Champions and Centers of Influence ....................................................................... 85

Jaime Develops Brand Ambassadors .................................................................................................. 88

Tactic 8 – Integrating Your Offline and Online Networking .................................................................... 90

Jaime Connects His Online and Offline Brands ................................................................................... 93

Tactic 9 - Embracing Social Selling Activities for Networking ................................................................. 94

Jaime Rescues Social from Being a Waste of Time ............................................................................. 97

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Tactic 10 –Building Manageable Processes ............................................................................................ 99

Jaime’s Follow-Up Process ................................................................................................................ 102

Tactic 11 - Connect These Tactics to Your Larger Goals ....................................................................... 103

Concluding Thoughts ................................................................................................................................ 105

Additional Resources ................................................................................................................................ 106

About the Author ...................................................................................................................................... 107

Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................................... 108

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Introduction

"Networking -- everybody has to do it, nobody has a good definition of what it is, and

most people dread it.” – from Daniel Pink’s blurb on Networking in the 21st Century.

I wrote this book because I want networking to be a key ingredient in your professional

success. If you are like most sales professionals, networking already holds an important place in

your daily business life. Unless you are simply a transactional order-taker, relationships are a

key part of business success. But I would hazard a guess that you aren’t getting all the results

that you want from your activity. Maybe you aren’t finding the right people to connect with, or

maybe your dance card is full but you are failing to realize any meaningful results from your

connections. What’s become clear is that networking in the 21st century is much more than

passing out business cards and then waiting for the orders to come rolling in.

Now more than ever, a focused and effective networking plan is critical for success as a

sales professional. Advancements in technology, new sources of customer knowledge, and

evolving economic forces have drastically altered the sales process over the course of just a few

years. You can’t treat your networking efforts as an afterthought that you’ll get to “if you have

time”. By engaging with your network consistently, you will be able to overcome challenges

and leverage new opportunities more easily. It’s one of the secret weapons that top salespeople

rely on. Luckily, you don’t have to be a networking maven or a “power networker” to be

successful. But you need to build the right connections, the right way, and for the right reasons.

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In Networking in the 21st Century: Why Your Network Sucks and What to Do About It

(Nit21C), I examine why networking gets such a bum rap. I start by looking at why

professionals struggle to get ongoing value from their networking. I explore the broad contours

of what does and doesn’t work in professional relationships, and I dive into the structural

problems that have caused countless individuals to fail. Not wanting to simply focus on the

negatives, I also offer long-term strategies to make networking an integral part of your career.

Then I translate those strategies into specific tactics that you can implement.

While writing, I ran into a challenge because “networking” is such a broad concept. Each

individual possesses varying strengths and weaknesses, and we each bring a wide assortment of

experiences, attributes, and skills to the party. And of course, we have different objectives that

we are pursuing. Whether it’s the differences between two attorneys with opposite personalities,

or the different career goals of a recent college graduate and a Fortune 500 CEO, everyone’s

networking path is unique. This diversity meant that the book had to keep the strategies and

tactics relatively high-level. I had to find a balance between providing information that would

be relevant to everyone and tactics that were specific enough to be usable in the field. Because

every networker has their own individual needs, I couldn’t dive into the minute details that

would apply to every individual situation.

I developed a “one-size-fits-all” approach to the strategies and tactics that I explored.

While Nit21C covers the bases well, I wasn’t able to drill down into the specific scenarios that

different professionals encounter in the course of their daily lives. This is unfortunate because

one of the most productive parts of any keynote or workshop I deliver on networking is the Q&A

section. That’s when participants get to ask for help with their personal situations, and they get

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feedback they can use immediately. It’s where the “rubber meets the road”. We connect

conceptual strategies to the very real circumstances that people are facing on a regular basis.

You are reading one of my solutions to this quandary: a series of companion books that

each focus on a specific group of professionals. I want to translate the strategies and tactics from

Nit21C into relevant and specific actions that are applicable to your situation. I wish that I could

write one for each person, but I don’t have that much time! This book doesn’t require you to

have read Nit21C, as it can stand on its own. However, there are ideas that we can’t explore here

in detail because of space limitations, so I encourage you to go and get the first book if you

haven’t yet (admittedly, I’m biased).

You will still want to personalize the ideas from this edition to make them align with

your personality, approach, and professional aspirations. I will do the heavy lifting for you; all

you have to do is tweak what you find here to fit with who you are and what you want to

accomplish. It’s not going to do all of the work for you, but it’s going to put you on your way to

becoming a networking rockstar.

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Get More Information Online

Networking in the 21st century is constantly evolving and changing. There are always

new questions to answer and new ideas to explore. To stay up-to-date, visit:

Networking for Sales Professionals

You can ask any questions you have about networking, get my latest tools and tips, and

join a community of other sales pros who see networking as a key ingredient in their personal

and professional success!

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Section 1 – Why Networking Matters

If we surveyed people for the top five words in business with negative connotations, we’d

probably get a smattering of the new buzzwords like synergy and iterate. But I’d bet that we’d

also see the classics: sales and networking. These perennial contenders are full of bad vibes for

most people. Ironically, at the same time that people gripe they also pay lip service to the

importance of both sales and networking in the current economy. So what gives?

There are some powerful misconceptions about both sales and networking that skew

professionals’ opinions, and it’s important that we clear these up. There are much more to these

activities than meets the eye and we want to develop a clear idea of what works and what

doesn’t. It’s critical to understand the hidden pitfalls that have caused so many salespeople to

struggle and fail when building their networks. If we know what challenges await us, we can

plan ways around them and we’re much more likely to succeed and reap the rewards.

Is networking really worth your time and attention? It absolutely is, and there are

important strategies and tactics that can take your networking from a random exercise in hope to

a valuable part of your business success. Before we dive into those, we have to look at why

you’ve struggled up to this point.

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How 21st Century Networking Changed the Sales World

Do salespeople really have the bandwidth for networking? Doesn’t it take their eyes off

the real prize: sales? In the end, is networking really that important for salespeople? I hear these

questions a lot, and for many sales professionals these days the knee-jerk responses are no, yes,

and... maybe. They might see the value of networking when they are looking for a new position,

or when they attend a national trade show, but on a day-to-day basis they have other things to

worry about. In fact, most salespeople fall into one of two camps. Many think that they are

already master networkers because they “talk to a lot of people”. When pressed, these

individuals are surprised to realize that they don’t get much business from their networking

partners. As a sales manager would say, they confuse their activity with actual accomplishment.

The other group doesn’t even want to be bothered about networking because they have a “quota

to fill”. They tend to be incredibly focused on their short-term goals and don’t have time for any

interaction which doesn’t directly get them closer to a sale.

I’m not surprised by these points of view, but they show a lack of understanding of how

the world is evolving and how the sales process is changing with it. For a long time, the sales

game was a numbers game. There were simple rules to the game and it was easily quantifiable.

It was assumed that if you put x amount of effort in, you’d get y results back. The percentages

might change, but the equations worked if you followed the normal path. Most salespeople in

the second half of the 20th

century followed a process that was relatively simple:

1. Find a prospect.

2. Provide some sort of sales presentation.

3. Close the deal.

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4. Repeat.

I’m sure that sounds familiar. There are many different variations and permutations of

the same process, and every sales organization, trainer, and management consultant has their

own spin on it. At their core though, they are all the same. The salesperson had to find someone

to sell to, create desire for what they were offering, and get a commitment to buy. It didn’t matter

if they were selling real estate or insurance to consumers, selling machine tools to factories, or

selling office supplies over the phone, they had to create as big a pipeline as possible and be as

efficient as possible when turning prospects into customers.

There is a huge advantage to this linear sales process: It depended mostly on a

salesperson’s effort. If a salesperson wanted to sell more, they just had to put in more effort. In

other words, the salesperson had control. And control makes us feel good, it makes us feel

secure. If you were in sales, the best way to improve your numbers was to spend time and

energy adding to your pipeline. When working within a linear sales model, networking is

important, but only in as much as it gives you access to new prospects. For a salesperson who

was continually hunting for potential customers, networking was synonymous with prospecting.

The image that most people have of networking, of the aggressive networker who comes right up

and hands out a business card and starts talking, is a byproduct of the approach that most

salespeople took.

This linear, quantifiable sales process was also highly transactional. It didn’t really matter

what other people thought of this obnoxious behavior, because salespeople weren’t looking to

build long-term relationships, they were looking for leads. Sure, many of the top salespeople

would realize that they could create more success by not being obnoxious and building

relationships over time. The rank-and-file, however, did not. We’ll see that there are powerful

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limiting factors on how many relationships a salesperson can manage at any given time. If a

business connection wasn’t going to lead to a sale, it made sense to let it go and find someone

else to talk to. That meant that even these top sales professionals who were “farming” for more

leads could only handle a small number of connections.

There are a lot of people who still focus on the old sales-funnel model. They are the sales

managers and trainers that insist that success comes solely from “pounding the phones” and

“making it happen”. It feels good to be able to hang our hat on very simple activities and feel that

our destinies are completely under our control. But is that approach still working? For example,

at my speaking gigs and in my workshops, I hear over and over how cold-calling has almost

completely lost its effectiveness. Sales reps share that nobody really picks up the phone cold

these days, and sending a cold email is like throwing a note off a cliff for all the good it does.

Yet you still find sales organizations that start their new representatives by handing them a

territory and a phone list (or a bunch of emails). They are just doing more of something that

doesn’t work.

A lot of things have changed since those old school tactics first developed. The most

important among these was a change in information asymmetry. “Information asymmetry” is a

fancy way of describing a situation where one side knows more than the other. When salespeople

had access to more information and knowledge, they held a lot more power and influence, and

their prospective clients knew that. Or rather, prospective clients knew that it was certainly

possible for a salesperson to call with a solution that they weren’t aware of. Because of that,

they were willing to give up some of their time and attention to that salesperson. In this world, it

made sense for a salesperson to cold call and reach out to as many people as possible because

there were opportunities waiting on the other end of the phone.

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The internet turned that world on its head. The balance shifted from the salespeople to the

customers. These days a quick Google search can provide a wealth of information for a prospect.

They can find product specification, pricing guidelines, product reviews, company information,

and even place an order online. They don’t need a salesperson to show up with a product

brochure and a pithy sales pitch. They can get all of that and more on their computer, or even on

their smartphone during their commute to the office.

And they could do it at their own time and pace, which was important because there was

a huge change in the amount of bandwidth that people had available to them. The likelihood of

someone taking a cold call goes way down (and continues to go down) when they have a full

inbox of emails and a to-do list that they never see the bottom of. These days, getting through all

of the other noise is a very real challenge if you are a salesperson trying to get a few minutes of a

prospect’s precious attention. It’s hard enough to get someone to listen to the voicemails we

leave, much less have a real-time conversation.

That doesn’t mean that people have stopped buying things. In fact, there’s just as much,

if not more, of a need for the services that salespeople provide. There is much more to buy and

more information about it, both in the business-to-consumer world and the business-to-business

world. It can be overwhelming to prospects, like walking down a grocery store aisle with fifty

brands of jams and jellies. Just because there is a lot of information available to customers

doesn’t mean that they know how to decipher all of it. The more complex the marketplace, and

the more options that are available, the more they need an expert who can lead them through the

process. They want to be able to access expertise and guidance when navigating the buying

process. They want that help, however, on their own terms and within their own framework.

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There was an old sales adage that people didn’t want to be sold, but they did want to buy. The

modern process doubles down on this concept.

Finding success in this new sales model requires new approaches. Salespeople aren’t

irrelevant, but their role has shifted. In a transactional model, the emphasis is on building many,

shallow connections as quickly as possible. After you decide that there’s no immediate sales

opportunity to be had, you drop the connection and move on to the next one. Since the process

is a linear “sales funnel”, the most successful salesreps pour as much as possible into the top.

Now, in a high-touch era of hyper-connectivity, just churning through sales prospects by

dumping all of them into your prospect funnel isn’t going to cut it. The most successful sales

professionals are becoming recognized as the problem-solving experts in their field. They are

the ones that help their customers translate modern information overload into a useable course of

action. Think of the role a doctor plays. Everyone could go on WebMD or look up their

symptoms in a book, but doctors are the ones that translate all of that information into something

that their patients (customers) can act on. The modern sales professionals’ goal is to develop

long-term relationships with their prospects to help them solve their problems. There might not

be an immediate need when they first start a relationship, but they cultivate that relationship over

time so they can help connect their solutions to the prospects’ problems. Then, when it’s time to

act, the salesperson is the first person they reach out to.

Modern networking fits into this 21st century sales world like a hand into a glove. Instead

of just building relationships with potential customers, what happens when you expand your

horizons? By incorporating potential referral partners, subject matter experts, and peers into

your relationship-building, you create a web of connections that provide you with the

opportunities and information that you need to be more successful. Instead of a “one-and-done”

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mentality, the goal is to nurture your relationships until they are ripe, and then harvest the fruits

that they bear. More prospects are a natural by-product of this web of relationships, but

opportunity can take a lot of forms. Instead of a purely linear process, the modern salesperson

sees their network as the path to finding new business leads, creating value for their clients, and

securing future partnerships. In this world, networking is an integral part of the sales process.

When I speak to audiences about networking, I ask if anyone has heard the saying, “It’s

not what you know, it’s who you know”. Invariably, the whole room nods their head. We all

intuitively understand that connections are a key component to making our way in the modern

business world. That saying used to be a negative comment that you would make when someone

got their job because of favoritism or nepotism. But these days, when we highlight the

importance of who we know for our professional success, it’s because we recognize an important

shift. Another way to say it: Who we know gives us the opportunities we need to act on what we

know.

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What the Heck is Networking?

You can see how the evolving sales process requires that we change our conception of

networking. For most professionals in and out of sales, the idea of “networking” evokes a very

specific image. Usually, it’s a networking mixer: a bunch of random people in the back room of

a local restaurant eating mediocre appetizers and eyeing each other up for business. Maybe you

like that idea because you mentally equate it with prospecting. Or maybe you have felt

uncomfortable with networking precisely because you associate it with having to hammer a

bunch of strangers in an attempt to find a lead. You’re not alone, there’s a good amount of

discomfort all around. In fact, the non-salespeople who hate networking usually blame it on a

salesperson who accosted them in an attempt to sell them something. If everyone involved in

this scenario dreads networking, we know that we need to find a new way to approach the

process.

And we can find a new approach. This outdated image of networking does us a huge

disservice. It prevents us from spending meaningful time and energy on building the

relationships that can connect us with ideas, partners, opportunities, and, most importantly,

clients. It’s time to leave behind the image of networking as nothing but an aggressive “business

card exchange”. A small shift in how you approach your connections can deepen and expand

your existing relationships, and make it more comfortable to add new ones.

We are going to approach networking as a relational process. For us, it’s not just about

acquiring a list of names or a random series of transactional encounters. It’s about a

relationship-based process that happens over time. Most people put little conscious thought into

building their relationships; our goal is to make your interactions much more intentional.

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Ideally, your network will consist of a broad landscape of connections that have information

flowing between the individuals within it. This leads us to the definition of networking that I

first put forth in Networking in the 21st Century:

Networking is building a web of relationships with others for mutual support in finding

business solutions.

Let’s dive into the components of this definition. The first is that your network is a web

– and to have a web you must have many interconnected strands. Size matters. You’ll see that

there isn’t a specific number to aim for, but a network obviously needs more than two people.

There are unprecedented opportunities to reach out to others in our world of global

communication and connectivity, and we want to leverage new tools and technologies to build

robust communities around us.

It’s important to develop reciprocity in your networking relationships. Good networkers

look to create a mutually beneficial exchange among the people they are connected with. The

entire process works better when both partners are helping each other. Even though networking

will be a key driver in your prospecting and sales, if you constantly look for ways to “get” from

your network without giving back, you’ll struggle. Just asking for business over and over again

isn’t going to cut it. The more you can connect your networking partners to the resources they

need, the more they will find ways to get you in touch with the help you need. It’s a positive

feedback cycle. When everyone in the network is looking for ways to support each other, the

benefits for everyone increase. It’s networking karma: what goes around comes around. The

more that you can add value to your networking connections, the more value they are going to

add to your career.

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When we consider the last part of the definition, we see the desired effects of networking.

“Business solutions” are why networking is worth diving into in the first place. While most

professionals only look at networking as a way to generate leads, we need to move past the

limiting idea of only looking for more business in the short-term. At its heart, networking is

about finding opportunity. Opportunity can be defined differently for different people; even for

the same person at different times. This doesn’t take away from using networking to generate

leads. Of course you are going to find new prospects through your network. The secret is to

expand your thinking beyond just finding a new person to call today. How about finding

partners that have influence over your prospects? What about connecting with colleagues or

even competitors? What would happen if you had great relationships with professionals in

complementary industries? Business information and knowledge can be the difference between

failure and success when you are trying to close a big deal. Your network can be a source of

ideas and wisdom that serve you well beyond a prospect you can call on tomorrow.

If there’s so much to be gained through a bigger network, why do sales professionals still

struggle to build connections and relationships? Even with the tremendous upside, most of them

aren’t taking the steps necessary to get any benefit from networking.

It’s easy to blame this on the short-term focus that many salespeople take to their

business activities. When you are looking at a quarterly sales quota, it’s easy to push networking

activities to the bottom of our to-do list. Networking is a long-play, and it takes time to see the

benefits. That makes it easy to ignore in the hyper-urgent environment that most salespeople

work in. But there’s a bigger obstacle that sales professionals face as well, one that has proven

hard to move past. When it comes right down to it, most professionals (not just salespeople)

have been set up to fail when it comes to networking. They don’t have the tools, they don’t have

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the training, and even worse, their internal wiring is completely wrong. The core of the problem

is simple: most people don’t know how to network in the first place.

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Why Have We Sucked at Networking?

If networking and sales are so intricately linked, and the skills that lead to success in both

so similar, why do so many sales professionals still struggle to build robust networks? What is

the missing link that continues to elude so many of us? Many of our challenges stem from the

way humans think and build relationships. Our internal makeup isn’t conducive to creating the

web of relationships that is necessary for networking success. Even if you think that you have a

knack for building connections with people, your networking has probably been pretty weak up

to this point.

That statement might have gotten you a bit defensive. Maybe you’re thinking that you

are a “people person”. You’re thinking that you already have the skills necessary for networking

stardom. That’s fine, but for just a moment, I need you to put aside your ego. This actually has

nothing to do with your individual abilities. I’ve worked with salespeople for decades. Heck,

I’ve been a salesperson for decades, and I know how we can be. We tend to have a lot of

confidence in ourselves. In fact, you might be thinking that other people’s networking might

suck but that you are the bee’s knees and have a killer network. And maybe you do. But when

we look at the science, we see that it doesn’t matter what kind of personality you have. The

problem isn’t in your social skills as such. The problem is that the social skills that humans are

good at were designed to solve completely different problems.

We struggle with networking because we’re not inherently wired for networking. Human

interaction developed in an environment that was much different than the one we find ourselves

in today. Our social skills come from an environment that required you to build strong

relationships with a few close people because you were hunting mastodons together – and you

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needed to be safe and successful. When we were hunter-gatherers traveling in small clans, it was

much more useful to build tight relationships with our family, tribe, or clan. Exposure to new

people and novel situations was a rare occurrence. It certainly didn’t happen on a constant and

consistent basis. You were surrounded by the same people your entire life, and that’s about it.

The challenges that we encountered in this world were much different than most of us face as we

walk into a cocktail reception at an industry conference. Our modern world, where we can go

into a local networking meeting with thirty people we’ve never met before or a conference with

hundreds of new faces, is a relatively new one.

There might be thousands of people in your contact list, but we just aren’t mentally

designed to build strong relationships with that many people. In fact, the average number of

close relationships a person can maintain is only 148. (See my discussion of Dunbar’s number in

Nit21C). You might think you know more than that, but do you really know them? You might

recognize most of the attendees at your local industry association meeting, but you might not

know much about them as individuals. My friends often call me the “mayor” of Evanston, the

town outside of Chicago where I live. It usually happens when I say hello to someone who just

walked into a restaurant or bar when we are out. I’ve met lots of people over the last decade

through my involvement in the Chamber of Commerce and local networking groups. But just

because I know a name and a face doesn’t mean that I have a close relationship with them. It

doesn’t mean that I’ve built up my relationship capitol with that person, at least not in a

meaningful way that I could leverage. I simply don’t have the brain space to handle the

information on that many people.

Having a gregarious personality isn’t necessarily going to help you have a bigger

network, because it’s the internal wiring of your brain that is holding you back. Even though the

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average sales person is confident with others and outgoing, the structure of how we manage

relationships in our brain has always been the limiting factor. It’s not because of a certain

personality type, lack of desire, or because we’re doing something wrong. We just don’t have

the capacity to manage the variables in a large number relationships.

For most of human history, that worked fine. In fact, for previous generations who had

limited access to places where they could meet new contacts, there was no need to handle more.

Even in the 20th

century, most professionals would spend their careers slowly accumulating

relationships because they could only interact with people in close geographic proximity. In the

old days you had to meet someone physically to connect with them. Then it took a lot of effort

to maintain a network because there weren’t that many communication tools available. Growing

your network was slow and steady. That also meant that the benefits of networking took a long

time to realize.

For sales professionals trying to find opportunities and build relationships, this mental

upper limit can be frustrating. It’s why the “power-networkers” in the 20th

century needed

elaborate programs to develop and maintain their networks. I knew salespeople who had piles of

files and notecards to remember who they talked to and when. They needed spreadsheets and

lists to keep track of everyone. This is why one of the earliest uses of the personal computer was

CRM software. There were sales trainers who espoused an exacting regimen of phone calls,

personal notes, and in-person visits to keep the relationships fresh. It was exhausting and most

people couldn’t keep up with it. I remember reading Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone and

thinking to myself, “I’m not sure if I could keep up with his schedule!” Most professionals

couldn’t either and they failed or didn’t even bother trying. These networkers were fighting

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against their own internal inability to manage a lot of relationships at once. They were

struggling with that inherent upper limit.

This is another reason that most people have a severe distaste for networking. The whole

process sounds great on paper, but it was hard to translate it into actual results. There would be

situations where your network was valuable, when an introduction or idea from a colleague or

old school buddy would prove valuable, but it was sporadic and usually unplanned. It was hit-

or-miss. The energy required to get a regular pay-off seemed overwhelming. It was too

haphazard and inconsistent. If having a big network was helpful, but it is almost impossible to

maintain a large network, why bother?

There is a solution to this roadblock. There are two key understandings that we have to

internalize. In Nit21C we look at the power of weak connections as described by sociologist

Mark Granovetter. His definition of a weak connection is someone you see only occasionally –

less than once a week but more than once a year. In his research, he found that it’s not the

people you have super-close ties to that provide the power in your network. It’s more common

to get information, leads, and introductions when there is only a loose connection. These people

spend time in different spheres of information which means they have access to new and

different resources. That’s important because the opportunities from networking arise when you

are exposed to these new spheres of information.

We used to think that you had to create a strong bond with someone to get benefits from

the relationship. The true power comes from having earned the right to engage with them. Good

things happen when you have gained access to their spheres of information. That’s why you

don’t have to become BFFs with someone to create a valuable networking connection with them.

Just having the ability to keep in touch with someone, to cut through the “noise” that’s out there,

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can be enough. Think about many of the best leads and business opportunities that you’ve come

across. My guess is that they didn’t come from people that you knew well. Rather, they were

probably from people that you had only tangential relationships with. The value comes from

having periodic interactions and a base level of trust that allows you to pick up your conversation

easily.

This is where the second trend comes in: technology. We’ll explore the strategic ways

that technology changes the networking game in Section 2. But for now it’s enough to see how

technology can move us past the internal challenges that held back our networking in the past.

Granovetter’s work shows that our networking goal should be to maintain our weak connections

on a consistent basis. But we can’t do that alone. It’s the perfect job for social media, email,

texts, blogs, CRMs, smartphone apps, and the like. We aren’t going to be able to change how

our brains work, and what they can and can’t do. But we can outsource some of the mental work

that we weren’t able to manage. Now we have a means of communication which allows us to

interact with hundreds, if not thousands, of people in minutes a day. We can outsource our

memory to spreadsheets and CRMs. Instead of having to remember to call someone, we can

have a reminder pop up on our phone.

These tools open up new paths for the salesperson to be successful with networking, but

they don’t replace the traditional building blocks of relationships. In fact, understanding the

power of weak connections and technology should give you the basis for having better

relationships in the offline world, not replace them. We still want to engage with others in the

real world and the foundations of our interpersonal relationships are still important. That’s still

where business is going to come from. We need a way to put all of these pieces together. Now

we can see a path forward. The proper mindset and abilities will allow us to walk on that path.

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Our goal will be to combine these online tools and the offline skills so that our networking

relationships can become a main driver of our business.

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Section 2 – Cultivate a Strategic Approach

You network plays a key role in creating access to the resources and opportunities that

you need. Leveraging it correctly requires strategic planning as well as tactical execution. Like

a kid who wants to skip the instruction manual and start playing the video game right away (that

was totally me), it’s common for salespeople to just want to skip directly to executing on the

tactics. Talking strategy seems like a needless time-waster, but the right approach creates a

difference in how you implement these tactics. Ideally, your strategy will inform and influence

your tactics because you will know the “what” and “why” as you incorporate the “how”.

I want to cover four different strategic areas that will help you become more effective

with the tactics we cover in the Section 3. We’re going to look at:

1. The Power of Investing in Yourself

2. Developing Your Social Savvy

3. Embracing Technology

4. Acting as a Profersonal™ Professional

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Invest in Yourself First

Early in my sales career, my first sales manager pointed out that the most important

resource I had in a commission-based position was myself. The more I invested in my skills and

knowledge, the more I would realize a return on that investment. Learning new tools, reading

books, listening to audio programs, attending workshops and conferences, and sharpening my

skills were all ways to make myself more valuable. I noticed that all of the other top sales

professionals did the same. Since our abilities had a direct impact on our sales performance, and

our sales performance had a direct impact on our paychecks, it made sense to improve those

abilities.

Another piece of advice I got from that early sales manager was, “No matter what, no one

will ever care about your career more than you.” To this day, I love coaching salespeople

because they “get” the connection between their engagement in self-improvement and their

bottom line. I don’t have to convince them that time and effort used to cultivate their abilities is

well spent. This internal focus will also serve you well as you look to build your networking

skills. You are going to find very few formal opportunities to develop and hone them, so you are

going to have to do it on your own. Even if your employers have sales training and coaching,

they will rarely offer dedicated networking training. And it’s not like there was a Networking

101 class you could take in school. For all of the talk of the importance of networking in our

modern business world, there are very few chances for people to sit down and learn the

fundamentals. You can’t wait for someone else to come in and teach you these skills. You are

going to have to do it for yourself.

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As a salesperson, you have a limited supply of time and attention to put on your business.

It makes sense that improving your networking skills isn’t usually on the top of your to-do list,

and it’s hard to compete with the urgency of a customer email or the sales presentation you have

to prepare. It’s easy to let networking and your networking-skill development fall to the bottom

of your to-do list over and over. Stephen Covey of Seven Habits fame referred to non-urgent,

important activities as Quadrant 2 activities (if this is you first exposure to the idea, you really

should go look it up). These were the activities that were critical for success, but rarely made it

onto our radar without some serious discipline. It is for hard for them to compete with the

“fires” that we have to continually put out through the day. He pointed out that spending time

on self-improvement was like sharpening the saw. Just like a lumberjack could chop faster and

more effectively by taking care of his tools, so too could modern professionals get better by

sharpening their own saws. For the modern sales professional, those are their internal abilities

and skills.

In Nit21C, I address this when I look at the need to be an autodidact, someone who is

self-taught. The first step to developing your networking skills is acknowledging that it’s worth

putting into your schedule. Think of building your skill-sets the way a corporation would invest

in new equipment. It’s important to have the tools needed to get the job done, and that includes

the “soft skills” as much as the newest CRM or mobile app. Since no one will care about your

business more than you, no one will care more about your individual professional development

than you.

We’ll start looking at where to put that attention and energy in the next chapter. For now,

let’s look at how you can go about the process of investing in yourself and building your

networking skills. Luckily, building your capacity as a businessperson has a relatively low price

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tag. What it will cost is a little effort. You wouldn’t expect to get in better shape without going

to the gym or hitting the running trail, and you’ll need to put in the time to build your networking

muscles. Don’t expect to become a better networker overnight. It doesn’t have to be a huge time

commitment, just keep it consistent. Dedicate a specific amount of time each week to improving

your networking skills. Putting in 15 minutes a day, or even one hour a week, adds up.

There is no “right way” to learn. Instead, learn in the most effective way for you

personally. If you work best in a classroom-type setting, then find group learning opportunities.

It could be a half-day workshop or a longer conference on building social skills. There might

even be an ongoing course at a local college or university that you can take advantage of. If you

like to read (and based on the fact that you are reading this, you might), explore your local

library or Amazon for books on relationship-building. Take some of your internet surfing time

and read articles about communication, influence, and branding instead of watching kitten

videos. If you are a visual learner, YouTube, Lynda, Udemy, Coursera, and other sites are only a

few mouse clicks away and are chock-full of professional development courses. At any time you

can get access to premium information for only pennies.

You can also turn your existing activities into learning opportunities with some focus and

intention. Experiential learning is often one of the most powerful ways to develop new skills.

Let’s say you want to improve your rapport with your networking partners by asking better

questions. You are already interacting with a lot of people through your prospecting and sales

calls. Use those situations as a chance to practice how you are asking questions and then using

the answers to create new paths for your conversation to follow (see Asking the Next Question™

in Nit21C). If you think that you monopolize conversations too often, go to your next

conference and deliberately try to focus your attention on the people that you meet. The skills of

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a master networker aren’t complex, rather they are basic skills done very well. Find places to

practice those.

For some salespeople, traditional learning can only go so far. Many people go into sales

because they want to interact with others, not sit in front of a computer or spend time reading. If

you’re in this camp, a great way to learn is from your successful peers. Find a few of the

colleagues on your team who are better than you, and pick their brain. It’s common for sales

organizations to have some type of field training where less-experienced sales reps will tag along

and watch the veterans work. You can use this concept to get better at networking, too. Identify

the people in your organization who are great at building relationships with the people around

them and use them as role models. Whether or not you use the title “mentor”, you are looking

for people that you can observe and then ask questions. It’s just as valuable, maybe even more

valuable, than what you can learn sitting through a workshop.

You might think that your schedule won’t allow you to spend time on learning and

improving these skills. The average salesperson is bouncing from activity to activity with little

spare time, so when can you sit down and take time to invest in you? Look at ways to combine

your learning with your other responsibilities. Can you listen to audio courses in the car when

you are going to client meetings? Can you watch online training videos instead of the latest

syndicated sitcom while on the elliptical machine? Technology allows us to turn any

environment into a classroom. We consume a lot of information on a daily basis, look for ways

to improve the value of that information. For example, if you have 30 minutes of travel time

every day, that’s 2½ hours of podcasts you could listen to every week.

Pursue whatever approach works for you. Even though there aren’t degrees and

certificates in networking and relationship-building, you will notice over time that your ability to

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interact with your peers and teammates will improve. You might even put some of this

autodidactic focus on other parts of your career that you want to improve. It’s especially

beneficial in networking because you don’t have to wait to practice your improved skills,

networking is happening all the time. On a daily basis, you will not only build the relationships

themselves, you will be getting better at building those relationships. To paraphrase the popular

saying, you are both fishing and learning how to fish more effectively at the same time.

Now that you are excited to focus on building your skills, what should you actually work

to improve? For networking, there are fundamental skills that rest at the foundation of any good

professional relationship: basic social skills. Let’s start there.

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Develop Your Social Savvy

As a salesperson, you are a professional relationship builder. And if you are a pro, you

must be a master of all the necessary skills, right? Well…

You’re probably aware of the cliché of the obnoxious, pushy, overly-talkative, sleazy

salesperson. I’m sure that you aren’t one of those sales reps, but there’s a powerful truth we can

pull out of this stereotype. Talking a lot doesn’t equal success in sales. Many people go into

sales because they enjoy talking to others. In fact, I remember an aunt telling me I should be in

sales because I liked talking so much. While not inherently a bad thing, a problem crops up from

“good talkers” being pushed towards sales. While confidence when engaging with others is

important, you don’t close deals just because you are gregarious and talkative. Skills such as

listening, problem-solving, and value-building are just as, if not more, important. The

unfortunate side effect, though, is that even non-sleazy salespeople are often equated with the

fast-talking hustlers. The stereotype of the pushy salesperson hurts everyone who is selling.

This is compounded by the fact that the negative caricature doesn’t stem from poorly

educated salespeople. It’s not that pushy salespeople don’t know how to “sell”; it’s that they

don’t treat prospects and customers with consideration and respect. Basically, they fail to treat

the people they work with as people. These misconceptions arise, not because of a lack of

professional acumen, but a lack of basic personal communication skills. When dealing with

others, our technical skills and know-how matter a lot less than our ability to engage in a good

conversation. Interpersonal communication skills are of paramount importance, and we have to

accept that those skills rest on much more than just our ability to talk. Much of our success as

salespeople and as networkers comes after we build a solid relationship. Without that

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foundation, we’re just bouncing around from conversation to conversation, hoping something

good happens.

To grow as a networker, then, we need to be willing to put aside our egos for a moment.

I have yet to meet a salesperson who doesn’t think that they are already an expert in

interpersonal communication skills. You probably have a pretty high opinion of your own skills,

and that confidence is valuable. But I will put money on the fact that there are still some areas

you could improve. And that’s without me even meeting you. Why am I so confident? Because

we all have areas of opportunity.

Every time you build a relationship with someone, whether it’s a customer, a prospective

customer, or a networking partner, remember that the interpersonal component, the human

component, is the foundation that the rest of the relationship gets built on. In a very real way, it

is the relationship. That’s why continuing to refine and develop your communication skills is

key to building a strong business network. At its core, your network is nothing but a series of

interpersonal entanglements.

This isn’t an airy-fairy idea. This is the mechanics of engagement and interaction. The

old sales adage goes “people prefer to do business with those they know, like, and trust.” It’s a

great litmus test to use when building your network. Your first focus is to ensure that those you

meet can check these three boxes. They have to know who you are and what you do. They have

to like you as a person and enjoy spending time with you, even if it’s just a few moments at a

networking event. They have to be able to trust you. If they can’t, they aren’t going to pass

along your information and send referrals your way, or do business with you at all.

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I once managed a sales rep who was everything you would imagine a top performer to be.

He had hustle, perseverance, strong technical knowledge, and he knew how to close a sale. But

he was also abrasive and self-centered. He managed to irritate the entire service department and

struggled to build long-term relationships with key referral sources. Of course he had to hustle!

He was always chasing new leads because he’d burned chances to cultivate long term-

relationships. It took him taking a good look in the mirror before he was willing to make a few

changes in how he handled people. And lo and behold, once he stopped ticking people off, he

was able to create some great relationships with centers of influence that kept him busier than

ever. It wasn’t a lack of skill that had been holding him back, it was a lack of social awareness.

This foundation won’t be improved by learning a perfect sales script or developing the

exact right elevator pitch (although I will show you that in Section 3). It comes from developing

the social skills that you already have to an even higher degree. You networking will depend on

how easily others can interact with you. As we saw, you don’t have to become everyone’s best

friend to be successful, but you have to make it easy to engage with you. It’s worth looking at the

skills that allow this to happen,

Always remember: a business relationship starts as a relationship first.

In Networking in the 21st Century, I talk about the need to develop your social savvy.

Social savvy describes a whole range of skills that allow us to build relationships with the people

around us. Whether you call it social savvy, people skills, or soft skills, your networking

depends on your ability to relate to others. The sales rep that I mentioned earlier could have

spent hours trying to learn every closing technique in the book and it wouldn’t have made a

difference. He had to improve his ability to make people feel comfortable with him.

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Luckily, unless you are a hermit, you aren’t starting from scratch. We are social

creatures who live in a social world. You have a lifetime of experience in human interaction.

Our goal is to build upon the skills you already have and find ways to deliberately and

intentionally improve your ability to interact with others. How do you improve these basic

skills? In some ways, you could simply ask yourself: “How do you make friends?” There’s no

need to make this overly complex. In Networking in the 21st Century I cover a number of areas

that are important for interpersonal communication. It’s not an exhaustive list, but they include:

• Dress and Grooming (Presentation)

• Body Language

• Small Talk

• Sense of Humor

• Listening

All of these may sound simple and basic – and that’s the point. They are basic, meaning

they are the “base” that everything is built on. People ask me all of the time for the “secret” or

“trick” to being a successful networker. Not only do these shortcuts not exist, but it’s ironic

because most of the challenges that people face in their business relationships stem from a gap in

one of these much simpler areas. Over and over, I’ve run into salespeople who want more

clients and a better network, but they fail to realize that the path runs through their relationships.

They make no efforts to improve their interpersonal skills and their careers languish. It’s hard to

build a network if nobody enjoys being around you.

Give yourself a mental “check-up from the neck up”. Write down a quick list of your

strengths and weaknesses when you interact with people. Why do people enjoy being around

you, and what drives them nuts? We’re not looking for a comprehensive personality assessment.

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It could be as simple as jotting down that you are great at making people feel comfortable around

you…but you aren’t great at listening for details. Do you hog the conversation, or are you

missing out on chances to share? If you are struggling to identify the main areas of opportunity,

ask a trusted business associate or friend, “I’m trying to get better at networking, and I want to

improve my communication skills. What’s one area that you think I could improve to create

better conversations with others?” See what they say.

You don’t have to change who you are as a person to be successful. You should always

be yourself and be authentic. Build upon your current relationship skills. They are the bridge

that will create trust and rapport between you and your networking partners. For many

professionals, it’s a key step towards improving the benefits that they get from their networking

activities. There’s another saying that you might have heard, “People don’t care how much you

know until they know how much you care.” By improving your interpersonal communication

skills, you are setting yourself up for being successful in networking, sales, and so much more.

You are creating the foundation that will allow you to leverage some of the other tools available

to you. One of the most important of those: technology.

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Embrace Technology the Right Way

Technology is the secret weapon of a great networker. As we saw earlier, technology

provides a way for us to bypass the conflict between the value of many weak connections and the

inability of our brain to manage them. Now we have tools that enable us to maintain those weak

connections by outsourcing part of the process. We can connect with people beyond our

immediate geography and our networks can span the globe. Instead of having to physically visit

or call someone, we can shoot quick texts or emails to our connections that take moments and

keep the relationship on a low simmer. We can send a status update out on social media to

hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously and truly scale our reach. We can track all of

our relationships on our CRM software, which we can probably access anywhere because it’s

stored on the cloud. To check in on any of this activity, all we have to do is reach into our

pocket and pull out our personal computer that we carry with us…and occasionally make calls

from.

None of this should sound new to you. If you’re a salespro who is out hustling and

making business happen, this probably describes how you operate already. That’s not a bad

thing. Take away phones, computers, video-conferencing, global distribution, and all the rest,

and we’d be back to selling anvils door-to-door. Technology, and more importantly, its effective

use, is a critical ingredient in success for today’s sales professional. Whether you love

technology or you are completely annoyed with how it’s intruded into every moment of your life,

it’s here to say.

In the same way, technology is a necessary component for networking success in the 21st

century. It doesn’t replace your offline interactions, but we can harness technology to enhance

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your existing communication and expand the scope of your interactions. You don’t have to

change what you are already doing, but you want to add another layer. Instead of just narrowly

focusing on your prospects and clients, include your entire network in your on-going activities.

That might seem overwhelming and impossible when you think of your current level of

engagement. The only way that you are going to be able to manage these additional

relationships is by strategically leveraging the tools that you have available. That doesn’t mean

blindly shooting out messages, texts, and emails left and right. That doesn’t mean that you have

to use every new app that comes on the market. That doesn’t mean being “plugged-in” 24/7. It

does mean you have to be intentional with using technology to support your existing

communication process.

Being deliberate with your technology is critical, because it can easily be a source of

countless wasted time. You could spend hours doing market research that is little more than

glorified websurfing. Sales reps find it easy to check LinkedIn one more time instead of picking

up the phone or sending an email. You can get lazy and send texts that are poor substitutes for

in-person conversations and cause confusion and wasted time. It’s important to keep in mind

that technology is simply a tool, one that can help or hurt our efforts. Think of it as an

“enhancer”. Whatever you are doing well or doing poorly, it enhances the effect. It compounds

the results that you are already getting, regardless of whether they are good are bad.

In our case, the goal is to integrate these new tools into how we interact with our

network. The key is to connect each of the tools with a specific activity or function, especially if

you are struggling in a certain area. For example, if you have problems keeping your network

organized, consider using the CRM software that you use for your prospects to also track

networking conversations. If you are struggling to find ways to share content on social media,

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check out programs like Hootsuite or Buffer that allow you to collect and easily share articles

that you are reading. If you want to demonstrate your subject matter expertise, a blog might be

perfect. I go through a list of different ideas in Nit21C. Ultimately, you want these to be in

service of your business goals, and especially towards the goal of cultivating a stronger network.

Technology is a tool, just like a hammer, paint-brush, or circular saw. Though you might

be able to pick up a screwdriver and use it with little instruction, you might need a little help

learning how to use a mechanized jack-hammer. In the same way, there is a learning curve to

using technology. So after you decide what tools you are going to focus on, make sure you get

adequate training on optimizing its use. Whether it’s a new CRM system, social media platform,

or email response system, don’t expect to use it effectively without investing in some learning. I

remember taking a simple course on using Twitter that saved me hours of time and made me

much more efficient because I learned all of the shortcuts. Don’t shortchange yourself when

getting in the swing with technology. Think of it as another place to be an autodidact.

You’ll notice that I’m talking about all kinds of technology in this chapter. In most

people’s minds, however, technology for networking is equated with social media. While all

technology is critical success, it’s worth paying a little extra attention to how social networking

sites can help and hurt. Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram have

become a staple in our lives. And those are just the well-known brands. There are also

platforms like Snapchat, Blab, Slack, and the one that is being invented as I write this paragraph.

If we want to look at the good and bad of technology’s impact on business and networking, you

don’t have to go any further than social media. There isn’t enough time to talk about social

selling and digital networking in depth here. That would take a book or three (In fact, I wrote

one. Check out Networking in the 21st Century…On LinkedIn). But whether you are in the

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camp that sees online networking as one of the best things since sliced bread or just a fad that

won’t go away, there are powerful ways to cultivate your network through social media that you

can’t ignore.

While social media can help with your networking, you don’t have to spend all of your

time tweeting and snapchatting. A networking friend once said about his social media use, “The

most important thing is mindfulness. You have to have enough awareness to know when you are

nurturing a relationship and when you are just sharing kitten videos.” Don’t get lost down the

rabbit hole of social media, dashboards, and data. You are going to struggle if you spend all of

your time staring at your cellphone instead of interacting with the people around you. Ask

yourself if your time on a digital platform is moving relationships forward. If it isn’t, either

change what you are doing or get off of the computer.

When you are using digital tools to move your relationships forward, they play an

important role in helping you scale your attention beyond Dunbar’s number. This is a key

component in maintaining contact with the wide range of weak connections that we mentioned

earlier. You can nurture these relationships with tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and the

latest site du jour. In just a few minutes a day, you can share information and find out what your

networking partners are up to. In the next section we’ll cover some tactical steps to bring social

media under your control, but always look to strike a balance in your social media use. Spend

enough time to cultivate your relationships, but not so much that other parts of your business

start hurting.

The average salesperson has a host of powerful tools at their fingertips. Whether you

need a database, personal assistant, or video studio, you have access to capabilities unheard of in

the past. Don’t fear technology, but don’t give it too much credit either. Let it be your servant,

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and you will find yourself nurturing your relationships easily and effectively. It opens up a way

to connect with a much larger sphere of influence with a relatively small investment of time, one

that earlier generations would have been jealous of. Finding the perfect place for technology in

your networking is a journey, but one with a great payoff.

One of the interesting effects of technology, especially social media, has been the erosion

of the carefully constructed walls between our personal and professional lives. In the next

chapter we’ll look at how to navigate a networking world where there isn’t a clear distinction

between our friends and our clients.

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Act as a Profersonal™ Professional

Who are your friends? Who are your clients? Who are your colleagues? If you went

down a list of people that you knew and put each of them into a specific relationship bucket, how

long would it be until you had a hiccup because you didn’t know where to put someone? It

might a customer that you’ve worked with for the last five years who shares your love of vintage

muscle cars. Or maybe you have a college friend who was a perfect fit for your sales team and

was brought on after you referred her. There are an almost unlimited number of scenarios where

the line between your personal and professional relationships gets crossed. You aren’t alone in

this. Most people are finding that they have more and more relationships that blend the different

parts of their lives, and in fact the dividing line itself is much blurrier than it’s ever been.

This is part of a larger social trend, and it shouldn’t come as a shock if you’ve been in

sales for any amount of time. The relationship between the salesperson and the customer was

always one that pulled from both the personal and professional side. Great salespeople have

always known the key to connecting with their prospects was to connect as people first.

Mediocre salespeople skirted the line of being inauthentic and just feigning friendship to get a

prospect to buy, but the best salespeople always spent time getting to know the people they

worked with. They learned their challenges and looked for ways to help them with those

problems. Consider the popular concept of solution-based selling which focuses on learning a

prospect’s pain points and providing them with the right solutions. During this process, it makes

sense that a salesperson would probably start to genuinely care about the success of their client.

Whether in a business-to-business or business-to-consumer environment, these relationships

were a key part of the sales process.

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What about the people that you spend hours and hours working with? Of course you’re

going to develop friendships with your colleagues and peers. I have been to many national sales

conferences as an outside speaker. Some of the attendees have known each other for years and

it’s clear that the relationships are about much more than business. The conversations tend to

revolve around family and personal matters as much as they focus on annual sales quotas. Being

in sales, and having some familiarity with these patterns and interactions gives you a huge head

start to building a great network. You just have to apply this process beyond your prospects and

colleagues.

In Networking in the 21st Century I write about a concept called profersonalism™. The

term was first coined by my friend Jason Seiden, the CEO of Brand Amper. It describes the

convergence and overlapping nature of our personal and professional lives in the modern world,

especially online. In the second half of the twentieth century, many professionals tried to

separate the different areas of their lives, and keep the people in those areas apart. The thought

was, “These are my work connections over here. Those are my personal connections. Here are

my friends, here are my co-workers, and here are my industry colleagues. I’m going to put them

all in neat little silos.” Of course, it never really worked out so cleanly. We’d still have

colleagues that became friends, and we brought our friends and family into our work sphere

when necessary (I got one of my first jobs when my dad’s coworker’s wife hired me to scoop ice

cream at Milwaukee’s Summerfest).

So the world was never black and white to begin with, and it continues to become grayer.

Younger professionals entering the workplace never had these clearly defined silos, and are

much more comfortable mixing the different parts of their lives. This runs parallel to the further

erosion of these neat and tidy categories by social media. It is actually a powerful feedback loop:

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social media sites make it clear that the various groups overlap, and then it makes it even easier

to bring those different groups together. It’s easy to think of LinkedIn as the place for your

clients and Facebook as the place for your friends, but a quick glance through your connections

on either of those sites will quickly dissuade you of that idea.

This profersonal process is evident everywhere in our business lives, and it’s continuing

to increase. We live in a fluid world, and a key step in modern networking is embracing this

concept. Networking isn’t confined to business conferences and formal networking meetups,

and friendships don’t have to stay out of the office. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some

important steps to make our profersonal relationships more constructive and comfortable.

It can be unsettling when the structure of the relationship is a little more loose and

informal. You don’t have formal patterns to rely on. How should you interact with someone that

you know on a personal level who becomes a client, or who could refer business to you or

connect you to someone else? The blurring of clearly defined lines makes it harder to navigate

the relationship when you can’t fall back on set expectations.

The best thing to do is to let the context of your interaction drive the dynamics of your

interaction. Instead of relying on the defined relationship to guide the conversation (client,

colleague, networking partner, etc.) you can let the environment you are currently in dictate how

you engage. Relationships don’t happen in a vacuum, and neither do conversations. The setting

of an interaction is one of the ways to determine how you are going to engage. Think back to the

last conference you went to. Maybe there was an industry expert that you approached after they

presented a seminar. My guess is that you would cover different topics and chat in a different

way if you were at a cocktail reception held by the hotel pool instead of in suits after a workshop.

You’re talking to the same person, but the context has changed. That’s something that most

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salespeople intuitively understand. Pay attention to this skill because it’s important in navigating

profersonal relationships. If you have become friends with someone in your network, be sure to

keep the conversations professional when you are in a business scenario and personal when you

are spending time outside of a formal setting. Let the situational context drives the

conversational context.

Using the environment to help guide our conversations can still leave a lot of gray area,

so there are two considerations that can help when building profersonal relationships. The first is

to keep the comfort level and goals of your networking partner in mind. If you meet someone in

a professional context, don’t avoid the personal, but bring it in slowly. They might not be as

comfortable with the profersonal concept, and you don’t want to make them feel like the

conversation is going into topics they don’t want to talk about. Be situationally aware and try to

see things from their point of view. This is one of the surest ways to avoid putting the other

person in an awkward position. (If you are looking for one of those basic social skills to

practice, this is definitely one of them).

That brings us to the second key to successful profersonal networking: being authentic

and genuine in all settings. To go from the personal to the professional and back, you have to be

the same person in all environments. Just because you engage differently in different settings,

doesn’t mean that you should change as a person. What if one of the project managers at a client

company is your brother-in-law? You probably won’t walk into a meeting and talk about what

your niece and nephew were doing at Thanksgiving. Conversely, the family dinner table might

not be the ideal place for contract negotiations. But who you are shouldn’t change. You don’t

want to feel that you have to put on a mask or be inauthentic. The goal is to make sure that at the

core you are the same person in every setting. That way you aren’t worrying about what to say

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or do, which can be exhausting. You can go from situation to situation and rely on that

foundation.

Let’s even tie this into the technology conversation we had in the last chapter. If you

keep these ideas in mind, you’ll find that the profersonal mindset acts as a powerful catalyst for

how to engage in a hyper-connected world. Using social media, email, and texts to stay in touch

with people will lead to a network that spans your personal and professional spheres. When you

come from a place that’s authentic, you can bounce from professional posts to personal posts and

not worry about how you are engaging. You will be the hub of an interconnected web of clients,

partners, and peers…who are also your friends. It’s an incredibly fun and rewarding way to live

your business life. You’ll have business meetings that don’t feel like business meetings and

conversations with your friends that help move your business forward.

But of course, we still have to apply these strategies or nothing will happen. So let’s look

at ways to get tactical with your networking.

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Section 3 –Action Steps for “Un-Sucking” Your Network

In Networking in the 21st Century, I cover 28 tactical tools that can immediately

improve your networking. As I mentioned earlier in the introduction, I had to look at these ideas

in general terms so they would be broadly applicable. My goal here is to narrow the focus and

look at how these guidelines apply specifically to the sales world. I know that salespeople love

actionable steps, so in this section we’ll customize a few of the tactics from the original book so

that you can go out and use them right away. We’ll also add a few special ones that are relevant

specifically to sales professionals.

I encourage you to look at all of the tactics in Nit21C. Also, remember to check out the

resource page online for even more ways that you can successfully execute your networking

strategies.

Sales Professional Networking

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Meet Our Fearless Hero

In the previous installments of the Nit21C series, we’ve watched a number of

professionals play out the strategies and tactics of modern networking. We’ve had Bob the

Accountant, Emily the Millennial, Bill the User-Experience Manager, and Lisa the Web

Designer. Let me introduce Jaime the Technology Sales Executive to this group.

Jaime has been in the sales trenches for a little over a decade. He started out in sales as

many people do: by accident. After graduating with a communications degree, he bumped

around in a number of positions until he found a job selling office equipment. It wasn’t

glamorous, but to his surprise, he liked it! And he was good at it. He loved working with

prospects and clients, he loved the chance to compete, and he loved being rewarded for his

hustle. He moved around to a number of sales positions until he landed in the software industry,

where he found a natural niche. The company focused on creating software solutions for the

expanding “Internet of Things” and was on the leading edge of changes in the field. He enjoyed

the intricacy of creating complex solutions, and he still liked that his hustle had an impact on his

results.

Jaime recently moved to the west suburbs of Chicago with his young family. It’s been a

shift from the condo he shared with his wife downtown. A new (bigger) house, two young

children, a minivan…it’s time for him to step up his game. He’s pretty sure that he doesn’t want

to go into management, but he wants to scale up his income. And with more demands on his

time leaving little extra, he knows he actually has to follow the old adage to “…work smarter and

not harder.”

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Instead of grinding away in hopes of being more successful, he wants to become more

strategic with how he builds his pipeline. He has always felt like he was a good networker, but

upon consideration, he sees how he has been pretty transactional in a lot of his relationships.

Looking around at the true superstars in his business, he sees that many of them have developed

deep and long-term relationships that create benefits over and over. He wants that. And he’s

willing to make some changes to make that happen.

Jaime has never had a problem with meeting people or starting a business relationship

with them. Like most salespeople, he views his people skills as above average. However, he’s

never put any thought into the larger context of his relationships. He just went with the flow, and

kept on the lookout for the next opportunity. Up until this point in his career, he has only paid

attention to his “networking” in bits and pieces. In fact, he purposefully thought about

networking only when he was looking for a job. He still went to a few local industry events and

association conferences every year, but that was about it. Truth be told, he was often the guy at

an event who was just looking for someone to sell to. He never thought of himself as greedy or

self-centered, he was just trying to do his job.

But now he doesn’t have a lot of strong relationships with customers, peers, or referral

partners, and he thinks it’s time for a change. If he wants to break into the upper echelon of sales

professionals in his industry, he knows that building a strong web of relationships is going to be

critical. His goal is to bring some focus and leverage to his long-term relationship building. He

wants to create stronger relationships with his current clients to develop more opportunities and

internal champions. He’d love to connect with other professionals in the industry to keep abreast

of new developments and stay in the know on industry trends. Connecting with other influencers

could also go a long way to helping establish credibility and get referrals to new customers.

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As we explore ways to leverage the strategies and tactics found in Networking in the 21st

Century and how they apply to sales professionals, we’ll see what Jaime can do to cultivate a

network that will move his career to the next level.

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Tactic 1 – Creating a Plan

One of the bits of wisdom I received from my first sales manager is something I’m sure

you’ve heard as well: “Failing to plan is like planning to fail.” It applies to many parts of your

career, and it definitely comes into play when developing a network that will benefit you now

and in the future. Before you invest the effort and attention, it’s a smart move to figure out the

best places to leverage that effort and attention. Your networking plan should be an integral part

of your business development plan (you have one of those, right?) and is key in helping you

create a vibrant pipeline. It will include methods of finding and cultivating new contacts, as well

as ways to nurture your relationships over time.

Instead of making it up as you go along (and getting haphazard results), you’ll want to

outline a clear path forward. A good networking plan acts as a map to direct your efforts.

Shooting from the hip only works in the movies! Another old sales adage fits well here: “Plan

your work, and then work your plan.”

Creating a networking plan doesn’t have to be a formal and tedious event. It can be as

simple as writing down ideas in a notebook or in a file on your computer or smartphone. Involve

your sales manager if you have one. If you don’t, it can be helpful to partner up with someone

who is already in your network and wants to improve their networking too. Just grab lunch or a

beverage with them while you talk through your networking plans and answer the questions

below. That way you have an accountability partner for your networking activities. Be sure to

jot down your ideas, though, because writing helps you clarify your thinking and gives you a

reference point to come back to. There aren’t necessarily “correct” answers to these questions,

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but the answers you do develop will inform and influence how you approach your networking

activities.

Once you create clarity around your networking efforts, it’s much easier to make

decisions about how to build your network. You will find that opportunities pop up with more

regularity because you know what to look for, and you will recognize a chance to build a

relationship when it appears.

1. What are you trying to accomplish in your career?

Start your plan by defining the overarching goals you are looking to accomplish. The

more specific you can be here, the better. Saying “I want more clients and referral

partners” isn’t very helpful. “I want my pipeline to grow by 50%” or “I need to

connect with 1 new potential client every month” or “I need to connect with 5 referral

partners who are influencers in the software industry in the next quarter” is much

clearer and more likely to happen. Clarity helps you identify the potential connection

opportunities right in front of you.

2. Who do you need in your network?

Based on your clearly defined networking goals, you should be able to identify the

gaps in your current network. These are the people that you need to actively search

out. You can identify general groups of people by job title or role, or you can create a

“wish list” of specific contacts to reach out to. Move beyond your potential clients,

because you already have them on your radar. How about identifying people who

influence your ideal customers? Are there suppliers, vendors, or subject matter

experts to engage with? No matter what your business goals, it helps to have other

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people that you can talk to, share ideas with, and get feedback from. Actively looking

to build these relationships now will create immediate benefits, but more importantly

you will also have a solid network to rely on down the road.

3. Where can you meet them?

Once you know who you want to connect with, you have to connect with them. You

have to put yourself in situations where you can start these relationships. More often

than not, this means identifying the environments where your ideal connections spend

their time and attention. Approach this like an advertising executive: Connect the

venue to the audience. There is a reason that beer and trucks are advertised during

football games, and diapers aren’t. Where do your ideal connections spend their time

and attention, both offline and online? Think of industry or civic groups,

associations, charitable organizations, hobby clubs. Also consider online settings like

Twitter chats, LinkedIn groups, or active blog communities. Pick 2 or 3 places to put

your attention, and focus on them for the next six months, because it takes time to get

up and running.

4. How will you maintain and develop your relationships?

Follow-up is critical to your networking success, and it is easier to have good follow-

up when you have a plan beforehand. Create a simple flowchart describing what will

happen when you meet someone. You probably have some form of CRM that you

are using with your clients and prospects. Is there a way to add your networking

partners? Write templates for follow-up emails or messages that you will send to new

connections (see Nit21C for ideas). Decide who you are going to contact for one-on-

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one meetings and the questions you can ask in those meetings. Look out to the future

6 months down the line, or even a year out. How do you want to interact with your

networking partners then? The clearer you are now, the more likely it will happen.

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Jaime’s Plan for Success

Jaime had never created a strategic plan for networking, and if he was honest, he never

planned a lot of his prospecting. He was much more interested in getting out there and talking to

people, so his habit was to do the minimum necessary to get a decent list to work with, and then

he was off. He realized that was why he was working harder than he needed to (because he was

working hard, not smart). Spending a little time up front to develop a game plan might feel a

little uncomfortable, but he didn’t have a lot of time to waste. If he was going to leverage the

extra time he had to build his network, he’d need a blueprint to follow.

He enlisted help to make it easier. His Director of Sales, Tony, was stretched pretty thin

as far as time and resources were concerned. But during one of their conversations, Jaime shared

his goal of creating a stronger network to help bring in more business. Tony was on board and

suggested a few key areas where Jaime could look for good networking partners. Jaime also

brought it up with one of his oldest buddies in the sales world, Phil. They had met when they

were both rookie salesmen and even though their paths had diverged, they had lunch together

every few weeks. Phil shared that he had also been thinking about meeting some new people to

turbocharge his career, so they decided to spend time during their lunches talking about new

connections they made.

The biggest opportunities for Jaime lay in forming relationships with the IT leadership of

prospective client organizations. Even when someone wasn’t directly involved in the buying

process, a thumbs-up from the powers that be went a long way towards influencing those

decisions. Also, it was a relatively interconnected industry so he knew they could be a good

source of referrals and testimonials. For the same reason, he also knew that it was worth looking

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for connections with the burgeoning crop of bloggers, reviewers, and other industry

“influencers”. They often had a finger on the pulse of the industry, and knew what was going on

with many of the players that he wanted to meet.

To improve his chances of connecting with these people, he created a “relationship

checklist”. He knew that he had a tendency to bounce from one activity to another, and that his

follow-up would get lost in the cracks if he didn’t have a specific program. He put an Evernote

document on his phone that outlined his process after meeting a new networking connection,

from his follow up email template to a message he would send 2 months later to check in. It was

similar to the process he used when working with his prospective clients and was easy to modify.

All he had to do was follow his checklist, instead of constantly reinventing the wheel. He

felt a lot more comfortable that he would stay in touch with people because he had a map to

follow. There would be a lot of moving parts, but Jaime knew that when he made these things

habitual, they’d happen. The more he invested up front, the more his business would improve.

It focused his conversations with Phil at their lunches, and it gave him some actionable, concrete

steps to take.

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Tactic 2 – Planting a Flag

It’s hard to stand out in our noisy world. The people in your network are exposed to

hundreds of messages a day. Any information you are trying to share will easily get lost in the

shuffle. It’s important to create a strong personal brand that your networking partners associate

with you. I call it “planting a flag”. If you can’t be clear about what you do and why you are

good at what you do, there’s no way that your network will be able to connect you with

opportunities and resources. Every time your message gets passed along, it becomes a little

fuzzier (like the children’s game Telephone). That’s why it’s important to start with a clear,

concise message. The more clarity you create from the beginning, the stronger and more

memorable your message will be.

You might think that your brand, and your company’s brand, is already super-solid and

super-clear. You may believe that your network thinks about what you do constantly and

consistently, but that’s because your perspective is skewed. You live in your brain 24 hours a

day, 7 days a week, and so you think that everyone has the same view of what you do as you.

However, your contacts think about you and your company a lot less than you believe. They

have just as many things going on in their lives and careers as you do, and you are rarely on the

top of their list. It’s especially common to assume that our network knows the value we provide

through our products and services. We think that everyone knows exactly what we sell and how

we help our customers and clients. But one of the most common things that salespeople hear is,

“I didn’t know that you did that!”

It’s also important to move beyond your company’s brand and create a brand that is

specific to you. People don’t buy from a company, they buy from an individual…and they also

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don’t network with an organization, they network with a person. Who are you beyond just a job

title is a key component in your networking relationships. Find ways to flesh out your

individual contributions to your clients. You should still find ways to align what you are saying

on a personal level with the overall company brand, because they are intertwined. If you want

your partners to refer business and resources to you, they have to understand what you are

looking for and how to facilitate the right introductions.

Personal branding is a complex topic that has many layers, but there are four simple ways

that you can start thinking about your personal brand:

1. Your mission—why do you work with your customers?

Is there a particular passion that you bring to your work? Are you motivated by more

than just a paycheck? Product conviction is an important success ingredient for sales

professionals. Share your story!

2. Your method—how do you work with your customers?

Do you approach your work from a different angle that benefits your customers? For

example, I know a small business attorney that doesn’t have an office. She makes

“house calls” to her clients at their offices. They love the attention and convenience

and she sets herself apart. What do you and your company do that is different?

3. The demographics—who are your customers?

“Trying to be everything to everyone makes you nothing to nobody.” That

grammatically incorrect but incredibly sage advice came from one of my sales

mentors. People want to know they are dealing with an expert in their field, someone

who understands their particular situation. The more focused and clear you are about

your ideal clients, the easier it will be to find them.

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4. Your service—what do you do for them?

What will they get from you that they can’t get from someone else? What is your

“special ingredient”? Look at the other people in your field and find a way to

separate yourself from the rest of the pack. While a “Unique Selling Proposition” is

rarely truly unique, it will often set you apart from the rest of your competitors.

Communicate that difference to your network.

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Jaime the Expert in Digital Transformation for Business Success

Jaime had always thought the idea of a personal brand was a little foolish. He felt his job

was to make his employer shine, and build value for his prospects so that they could move from

prospect to client. But he could see how the internet was changing all of that. He had noticed

two trends:

His prospects had a lot more information at their fingertips and were approaching

him later in their sales process. In fact, it was now common for his prospects to

be close to their final decisions when they reached out.

They were also more overwhelmed by the information. While they had access to

a lot of material, they weren’t necessarily prepared to make good decisions

because there was so much data.

If he wanted to stand out to the people he was doing business with, he had to find a

specific niche that would differentiate him. When interacting with a client or someone in his

network who could connect him with a potential client, Jaime had to clearly define where he

could bring value.

He truly loved working with technology, and while not a computer programmer, had

always kept in touch with what was happening on the technical side of the work the company

was doing. At the same time, he also enjoyed working with his clients to engineer solutions to

their challenges, and their challenges often had a lot of moving parts. While most people

assumed that a salesperson wasn’t the place to find an analytical mind, Jaime’s client loved

working with him because he could bring all of the pieces together. “Creating solutions” wasn’t

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just a buzzword for Jaime, it’s what he focused on. He could bring together information, people,

and ideas from different parts of the organization to figure out the best path forward.

That would be his niche: he was the guy who crafted digital transformation solutions for

the Internet of Things by understanding how the software fit into the larger business picture.

Other people might pay lip-service to the idea, but Jaime could position himself in his customers’

minds as they guy to talk to when they were looking at ways to manage digital transformation in

their business, even if they weren’t looking to buy something from him right then. He could be

their trusted advisor where software and IoT overlapped. This would make it easy for everyone

in his network to understand why and when they would recommend him. It would be much

easier to have networking conversations and share how he could help people. In the end, he

knew this would make him valuable to his contacts and help him create better conversations with

people. It would also help him get into the buying conversations that his prospects were having

earlier than he might otherwise.

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Tactic 3 – Crafting an Intriguing Elevator Speech

Because sales professionals are constantly introducing themselves to new people, the

much-maligned elevator speech already holds a special place in their toolbox. One of the key

tasks for a salesperson is starting relationships and getting people interested in finding out more.

My guess is that you have a whole stable of openings you can pull from when it comes to

elevator pitches that you use. You’ve probably used them already on potential sales prospects.

These are going to give you a great foundation when networking, but we need to look at some

important modifications.

Creating a networking elevator speech looks to achieve a different goal in the beginning.

You don’t need to be as assertive (or pushy) with a networking introduction because you aren’t

looking to sell something right away. What you are really “pitching” to your audience is the idea

of starting a relationship with you. A clear and concise introduction of yourself makes a strong

first impression and gives people the chance to be intrigued and interested when they hear what

you do. A confusing or vague introduction won’t work. Speak about what you and your

company do clearly, and speak in terms of what will interest your audience.

Sometimes you will use your introduction when you are in front of a room full of people

that you don’t know, for example a networking breakfast or your local Chamber of Commerce

lunch ‘n learn. You can also use a shortened and informal version if you are meeting someone

one-on-one for the first time at a conference or at a social event. It’s common for salespeople to

go too intense too soon. Remember that your elevator speech is simply an introduction to let

others know who you are and why they would want to get to know you. Trying to sell from the

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very first moment will just push people away. Salespeople are known for being pushy, so be the

opposite. Pull them in. Intrigue your audience and make them want to find out more about you.

Here’s the outline of an elevator speech that I introduce in Nit21C. When you are

introducing yourself, it’s important to remember that your listeners don’t know anything about

you. We often assume that everyone understands the nuances of our daily work, but that’s

because we do it every day. If I told someone I was a speaker, author, and business coach, they

wouldn’t know what it means. Or at least they wouldn’t know what it means to me. When in

doubt, err on the side of being too basic.

The Structure of a Great Introduction

1. Share your name and title (what you do).

2. Tell them your mission (or your main goal).

a. Come up with something consistent (brand yourself).

b. This is your hook—just like a song— find your refrain and repeat it.

3. Give them a relevant piece of information (pick one – this can/should change).

a. Here’s a fact you might not have known.

b. Here’s an important industry fact that has changed.

c. Here’s a new way I can support my networking partners.

d. Here’s a twist on a current product or service that you might not know.

4. Give them a reason/way to act now.

a. Talk to me afterwards.

b. Reach out to me if you have any questions.

c. Find more information from this online resource.

d. Connect with me on (insert social media platform) at _______.

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5. Repeat your name and title (what you do).

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Jaime’s Introduction

Hi, I’m Jaime, and I’m an account executive with SoftwareSolutions XYZ. We work to

bring the latest software to our industrial clients. Did you know that there are going to be over

6.4 billion devices connected in the Internet of Things in the next few years? That’s a lot of

devices and we’re bringing more automation, control, and feedback into our customers’ offices

and manufacturing plants. The goal is to increase efficiency and decrease bottom line costs. If

you are intrigued by the way the Internet of Things is changing the workplace, or you know

someone who is tasked with digital transformation in their business and is struggling with it, I’d

love to connect. Please come chat with me after the meeting or reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Again, my name is Jaime, and I’m connecting people and technology at SoftwareSolutions XYZ.

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Tactic 4 – Balancing Relationships with Selling

Many of the questions I get when talking to salespeople about networking revolves

around a disarmingly simple topic: control. Should they follow up right away or let their partner

choose the pace of the relationship? How will they know when it’s OK to make an “ask” for an

introduction or business connection? What should they do if the relationship doesn’t seem to be

going anywhere? When there aren’t simple guidelines on how to monitor and change the pacing

of the relationship, it creates a lot of uncertainty and apprehension. It’s one of the reasons why

so many salespeople simply avoid networking altogether.

Many salespeople liked the 20th

-century sales process we looked at in Section 1 because

they always felt like they were in control. They were making the outbound calls. They were

doing the follow up. They were controlling when they asked for the business. It feels nice to be

in control, it takes out a lot of the uncertainty and fear. But the 21st-century process works much

differently. It has evened the playing field quite a bit between the salesperson and their partners,

both in networking and in sales. It has become common for others to dictate the pace of the

relationship. For example, now prospects will reach out to the salesperson when they’re ready,

but not before. The salesperson has lost their preferred position as the repository of information,

and so they don’t command the same ability to control the relationship.

It’s crucial to pay attention to this new landscape when building your network. You’ll

want to find a new way to navigate through your relationships, one that balances everyone’s

input. Strong-arming your networking contacts into your funnel isn’t going to help you make

any friends. That lack of control shouldn’t scare you away from networking, though. There are

still relevant tools and techniques that you can use to make the relationships meaningful for both

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sides. Instead of putting your focus on controlling the conversation, put your focus on the

relationship itself and how to create value for both parties.

I once heard an expert on social selling admonish a group, “You don’t want to get caught

in the Friend Zone, because nothing ever happens there.” While clever, it misses out on the fact

that being friendly and establishing a relationship is the foundation for everything that comes

after it. You can be friendly and still focus on the business parts of the relationship. You can

still be goal-oriented, you’ll just get there in a different way. When you are in sales, your job is

to make things happen and move business forward. Losing control over relationships doesn’t

remove this goal. It simply expands the potential paths that you can take to reach the goal.

How do you navigate relationships where you don’t have control over the other person’s

engagement?

1. Give up the idea that control is necessary for success.

The first step is simple: stop bemoaning the fact that you don’t have control over the

pace of your relationships. In reality, you never did. Trying to force people to act

when and how you want is pretty challenging, and it’s very hard to do without

upsetting the other person. You can still focus on results – just make sure that you are

focused on the end goals that support everyone in your network.

2. Listen – really listen – to interest signals.

When you hear about improving your listening skills, it’s not just a “feel-good”

exercise. It’s a very practical way to key into what the other person is thinking and

feeling. Pay attention to the other person because empathy is one of the best tools the

modern networker has. People will constantly tell you how they can help you and

how you can help them. All you have to do is pay attention.

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3. Don’t force it

Some salespeople struggle by failing to ask for business. Many others fail by being

pushy and not taking ”no” for an answer. It’s important to strike a balance. Because

they fear missing a chance, salespeople often go too far, too fast. If you aren’t sure

that the relationship is ready for what you want to ask, pause. In networking, as long

as you don’t burn the bridge, there will be a chance to ask again.

4. Give, give, give.

This is the recurring theme of the book because it is really that important. I’m not

worried about your ability to ask for things (you are in sales after all). The problem

is, so few people truly invest in their relationships. If you haven’t laid a strong

foundation, there isn’t a clever trick I can teach you to get help from you network.

When in doubt, find a way to help your networking partner and worry about getting

something back later.

5. Always offer an out if you aren’t sure.

There are rarely a lot of easy black and white questions in relationships. So

sometimes you might not know where the relationship stands. It can make asking for

help a little daunting if you aren’t completely sure that the relationship is ready for it.

It’s hard to know sometimes if you have built up enough relationship capital to ask

because there isn’t an algorithm for relationships. When in doubt, give an “out”.

(See the Section 5 for specific ideas)

6. Don’t overemphasize every individual relationship.

You don’t have to be everyone’s best friend. You don’t have to make every

networking relationship an amazing one. Keep in mind that the power of your

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network is in the connections between all of the people in it. You don’t have to be in

control of all your relationships to be successful. They say that selling is a numbers

game. So is networking!

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Jaime Finds a New Balance

One of the reasons Jaime had stayed away from focusing on his network was that it was

messy. He couldn’t easily track and quantify his networking relationships so he couldn’t easily

point to the successes he was having. And he had quarterly numbers to worry about. It didn’t

seem like a good idea to focus any of his attention on activities that he couldn’t ramp up. Since

he felt he that he couldn’t leverage his networking relationships through hustling more, why

bother?

He found a lot of security in the feeling of control that the linear sales process gave him.

He liked opening up his Salesforce dashboard and seeing exactly who he needed to contact and

what he needed to talk to them about. He didn’t like having conversations where it wasn’t

completely obvious what the next step was. Upon reflection, though, he also admitted that

because he wasn’t having open-ended interactions, he wasn’t giving himself the chance to create

new and bigger opportunities for his sales pipeline (and his career).

A key step for him was shifting his need for control from his individual relationships to

his overall networking activities. He decided to apply the same focus that he put on attacking his

sales calls to managing his engagement with his network. He let the conversations flow

organically when he was interacting with his contacts, but he would hustle to make sure that he

was having enough conversations and that his follow up was impeccable.

When he was in a conversation with someone, he started playing a game with himself.

He had always prided himself on his ability to find out a prospect’s pain points during his sales

presentations. He decided to follow a similar approach to his networking conversations. Instead

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of controlling the direction of the conversation, he would be a detective and try to find out what

his partners’ challenges were and how he could help them.

It didn’t happen overnight, but changing his focus did allow Jaime to have more and

better conversations with people in his network. Where he would have closed down interactions

in the past, or where he would have tried to lead it to a sales opportunity even if it wasn’t

relevant, he kept an open approach. He noticed that he wasn’t losing out by doing so, and he

began to find ways to help his networking partners that wouldn’t have been apparent in the past.

He also found he was enjoying his conversations more because he didn’t have to put as much

energy into controlling their direction. He began to look forward to connecting with people, and

that was a huge step in the right direction.

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Tactic 5 – Asking for Introductions and Opportunities

Giving up control is a bit of a metaphysical process. It’s important to remember, though,

that this is networking, so you want to leverage these efforts when appropriate. Building

relationships is fun and rewarding in itself, but we start networking relationships to help solve

business challenges. There are specific techniques that make tapping into that easier. We want

to harness the “asking muscles” from the sales process and apply them to approaching our

network. Many salespeople still struggle when navigating the networking world because they

don’t know the right way to ask for help. It’s challenging because there isn’t a cookie cutter

approach that can be applied to every networking situation. Here’s a secret: If you’ve built up

enough relationship capital with a person, it doesn’t have to be awkward.

It can be hard to quantify exactly when it’s appropriate to ask for help, so often you’ll

have to go by feel. There are a lot of variables to keep in mind: how long you’ve known each

other, how often you’ve interacted, what your interactions were about, etc. It can be helpful to

have some internal guidelines that you use when approaching your partners. An easy rule of

thumb to keep in mind is that if you feel awkward asking, it’s probably too early to ask. Flip the

situation. If they were to ask you for an introduction to a new business contact, would you feel

that it was too early or would you feel comfortable making the connection. It’s not always based

on time. There are people who I’ve immediately hit it off with, and after an hour-long

conversation about old-school hip-hop and craft beer, I’d be completely comfortable asking for

or giving an introduction. On the other side of the spectrum, there have been times when it has

taken months and numerous conversation and social media posts before the comfort and

confidence were there.

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Having a simple structure to your networking “asks” can also make things easier. When

you do ask for an introduction, for example, let the person know what kind of help you need, and

why you need it. Be sure to leave them an “out,” so they can take a pass on your request without

feeling bad. You don’t know everything that is going on in your networking partner’s

professional life, and they might not be in a position to help you at that particular moment. These

same rules apply when you are asking for information, ideas, or feedback. Here are a few easy

scripts you can use:

1. How to Offer Help

“Hi, Jill. The last time we chatted you mentioned that you were looking to build up

your business with larger companies. I was having lunch with Bill Smith over at

Company ABC and it sounded like he would be a good person for you to talk to.

Would you like me to introduce you by email? If you don’t have the bandwidth right

now, I can hold off. I just thought you might have a good conversation.

2. How to ask for an introduction

“Jim, I saw on LinkedIn that you know Susan over at Company XYZ. I’ve worked

with other firms like hers and I would love to see if there is a way that I can help

them. Would you be OK with introducing us? It would be great to chat with her, and

if she isn’t in charge of that area, I’m hoping she can point me in the right direction. If

you don’t know her well enough, no worries. Thanks!”

3. How to ask for referrals

“I’m currently building my client base and am always on the lookout for new people I

can help. Who do you know that I might be able to work with? Do you know anyone

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who needs my services, particularly people who need _______? Even if you aren’t

sure of their specific needs, if they are in (a specific role or field), I’d love to talk to

them. If no one comes to mind right now, that’s totally okay.”

4. How to ask for business or a meeting

“You mentioned that you were looking to __________ the last time we were talking.

I think I might be able to help you with that. Do you have time for a quick meeting

next week by phone or over a cup of coffee? Let me know what works best for you.

We can also schedule it later down the line if you are too busy right now.”

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Jaime Leverages His Network

Asking for introductions was a key part of Jaime’s networking process. He had resisted

creating business relationships with non-prospects because it seemed like it would be a waste of

time. He hadn’t felt comfortable bridging the gap between creating a personal connection and

asking for help, and so if there wasn’t an obvious opportunity, he stayed away. To get over that

mental block, he wanted to create a way to ask for help when it was appropriate. He felt

confident that he would be able to identify any opportunities that arose, but he wanted to ensure

that he would approach his partners in a way that was comfortable to them. It didn’t make any

sense to put effort into his networking just to turn everyone off by being too aggressive or

annoying.

An early chance to ask for an introduction showed him the value of not asking for a

referral before he’d built a proper foundation. He met Susan, who was a project manager for a

large manufacturer in the Chicagoland area, at an industry conference. Normally, he would have

asked right away for an introduction to the potential buyers at her company, but he waited. He

followed up with her to set up a lunch and do some “networking”. At that lunch he found out

that Susan’s company was going through a massive restructuring and had ordered a 6-month

purchasing freeze. If he had asked for an introduction without that knowledge, she would have

been hard-pressed to set him up for success. As it was, when Jaime asked Susan if she could

introduce him later in the year after the buying freeze was done, she said, “Absolutely!”

He also looked closer to home. One of his new neighbors, Luke, worked at a large

electronic-goods manufacturer, and was likely connected to some great people for Jaime to talk

to. At a neighborhood barbeque, he started a conversation with Luke about what they were

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working on at his company. The old Jaime would have immediately looked for ways to get an

introduction, but now he looked for ways to help first. In the course of their conversation, Jaime

realized that he could introduce Luke to an accounting-software company that had helped

Jaime’s firm. Later, Luke messaged Jaime to thank him and ask how he could help in return.

Jaime shared that he would love an introduction to some of the decision-makers at Luke’s

company, highlighting specific people (that he had looked up on LinkedIn) and giving an out for

Luke as well. It was easy and comfortable, and led to some fantastic conversations that Luke

had prepped perfectly.

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Tactic 6 - Talking Less, Connecting More…with Questions

One way to practice letting go of the need for control is simple: talk less. Most

salespeople talk way too much. It’s ironic that the stereotype of a good salesperson is someone

who is a good at talking. In reality, those who are good at listening to their customers and

prospects are usually the most successful. This same dynamic applies to your networking.

We’ve seen that a powerful way to move your networking forward is to connect with

people who may or may not appear to be ideal prospects. It’s common for salespeople to identify

ideal prospects at a networking event and hone in on them. There’s nothing wrong with this, but

it prevents them from seeing and identifying candidates for long-term networking relationships.

One way to break out of this is to focus on setting up conversations which do not solely revolve

around trying to sell someone. As an aside, people know when you are only talking to them

because you want to sell them something, and they tend to put their guard up. (Can’t you tell

when someone is trying to sell you? In the same way, others can tell when you’re doing it to

them).

But what you should you talk about over a cup of coffee if you aren’t trying to sell the

other person? It’s the same apprehension that makes us hate first dates. In fact, you can think of

these one-on-one conversations as a business “first date”. It’s actually quite easy, and your sales

training is going to make this much simpler. Our goal is build rapport with the other person, to

create the foundation of a relationship. We want to be the listener, not the talker, and the best

way to get them talking is through sincere questions. That way you can learn about them, their

business, and how you can help them. As you show interest in them, they will usually reciprocate

and find out more about you in return. When you ask insightful questions, you’ll find that you

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have many similarities with your networking partner, and you’ll find ways to help each other

professionally. An hour will fly by!

It’s practically impossible to get to know someone in a big, crowded room, but it’s pretty

simple when you have a conversation at your local coffeehouse. You don’t have to follow up

with everyone you meet (and you don’t want to get in the way of your regular sales calls). Reach

out to the people with whom you think you could create a mutually beneficial connection or

those you simply enjoyed meeting. Take a look at the starter questions below, but don’t feel like

you have to go straight down the list and ask question after question. Just use them as a guide or

to prompt the conversation. The more you know about them and their business, the better your

professional relationship will be. And heck, you can probably pepper these in to your sales calls

to find out more about your prospects and clients.

1. Where are you from?

2. Where did you go to school?

3. What is your degree in?

4. How long have you lived where you live?

5. Why do you live there?

6. Why did you choose your current career?

7. What did you do before this position?

8. What do you like best about what you do?

9. What do you like least about what you do?

10. Where do you see your career in 5 years?

11. Why do you do what you do?

12. What are your favorite types of people to work with?

13. What’s the best quality of your company?

14. What is unique about your company and how you work?

15. What is your biggest obstacle in the next year?

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16. What is your biggest business opportunity this year?

17. What other organizations are you involved in?

18. What do you like about them?

19. What are your favorite hobbies?

20. What do you think of people in my line of work?

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Jaime Becomes a Serial “Dater”

One-on-one conversations were something that Jaime felt comfortable with. Over the

course of his sales career he had met thousands of people, so sitting down to have a cup of coffee

with someone seemed natural to him. That didn’t mean, however, that there weren’t some

adjustments he could make.

The biggest shift was in who he reached out to. He had become wired to think in binary

terms: either someone was a prospect or they weren’t. If they were a prospect, he would pursue

them. If they weren’t, he wouldn’t. It seemed to work, but he realized that he missed out on

starting long-term relationships that could be beneficial down the line. He was kicking people

out of his network based solely on whether they stood out as a prospect immediately. He was so

focused on the short-term that he wasn’t building a network that would support him in the future.

He began to take a more open-minded approach to his networking. He didn’t want to get

in the way of his existing sales schedule, but he realized there was an opportunity to add in one

or two meetings a week with other professionals who weren’t in his pipeline or already existing

clients. He decided to start by reaching out to some of the individuals he enjoyed speaking to at

industry conferences, but who weren’t direct customers. There were some influencers and well-

connected people that he could reach out to, and he realized he didn’t really know them that well.

He also explored other ways that he could improve the quality of the conversations that

he was having. He had learned to ask open-ended questions in his sales training, but if he was

honest, they were always aimed at leading someone down to a specific topic so he could turn the

conversation back to his products. There was an opportunity to focus more on discovery for

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discovery’s sake, without having an agenda. His networking conversations would be a good

place to practice these kinds of questions.

When he did open up the range of his questions, he actually found that he was having

more fun connecting with people. Ironically, when he stopped trying to direct his questions to a

specific purpose, he found the quality of his conversations improving. Part of that actually

meant that he was uncovering better ways that he could connect and help the people he was

talking to. He also added a simple question to his conversations, usually near the beginning:

“What’s the most exciting thing that’s happening in your business right now?” He was so used

to trying to uncover problems that he had forgotten the power of getting people jazzed about

things that were exciting and interesting to them. It went a long way to build a solid rapport

between them.

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Tactic 6.5 – Karma: Connections & Contributions

As you are going through these strategies and tactics, you may notice that many of these

ideas don’t strictly revolve around “sales” or even “professional” approaches. They aren’t just

about business conversations. They are really about the relationships that you develop with

people over time. That’s not by accident.

A powerful process I’ve observed is something I call networking karma. Many

professionals who struggle with networking think it’s a linear, tit-for-tat process. They view it as

a transactional process, and they think every bit of energy and attention they put into their

networking should get them something in return. E.g., one introduction given should directly

translate to another referral down the line. They think that there should always be a direct

correlation between what they do and what they get.

These aren’t necessarily stingy or small-minded people, they just want to see direct

results from their efforts. I understand that, but you need to know that it’s not how the

networking process works. Think of your network as a ball of energy. The more you put into

this ball of energy, the more likely something will shoot back out to help you. You aren’t always

going to know when or how. In fact, it’s common for our network to help us in completely

unexpected ways.

I first saw this in action as a young salesperson. I was lucky enough to be pretty

successful out of the gate which led me to hang around with other top representatives.

Something that stood out to me very quickly was that the successful reps, the ones that had real

staying power, didn’t act like I thought they would. They didn’t put their focus solely on their

own results; they were also generous with their time and knowledge so that the people around

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them could be successful as well. If I had a question for one of the veterans, all I had to do was

ask. They would even take me out on their sales calls so that I could watch them in action.

I tried to mirror that activity, because I soon learned what they already knew: the more

you give, the more you get.

In Nit21C, there’s a half chapter about the power of personal development in professional

networking. In it, I wrote:

“Personal development has to precede professional development.

You can only be as good a professional as you are a person.”

If you want to see more benefits from your networking, it helps to look at the overall

approach you take towards the people in your network. The more you focus on being a great

person – one that is helpful, loyal, and interested – the more likely you are to get professional

benefits.

Understanding networking karma means that you continue to plant seeds and nurture

them, even if you can’t see an immediate return. Just because you can’t see a causal relationship

between your activities and their effects doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Take a long-term and

generous approach to your networking and you will see more and more opportunities come your

way. Keep putting the “networking love” out there, and networking karma will take care of you.

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Tactic 7 – Courting Champions and Centers of Influence

Being a lone gun-slinger is an attractive idea to many salespeople. Being the go-to guy

or gal who can close any sale as easy as closing a door hangs out there like a perfect promise.

Our egos like to think that we can do everything on our own and that getting help isn’t necessary.

That image tends to be reinforced by sales cultures and contests that put us on a pedestal as a

way to motivate us and help us resist the negative impacts of rejection.

There’s just one problem: it’s a myth.

Successful sales professionals know that getting a signature on the dotted line requires a

lot more than just a prospect and a perfect sales pitch. There are a lot of variables and many

different actors in nearly every sales process. The decision-maker is usually enmeshed in their

own network of connections like bosses, colleagues, and industry influencers. Even from the

salesperson’s side, there can be a host of other actors like project managers, account

representatives, or engineers that are critical to getting business. When I was working in the

security business, the sales team’s best friends were the installation technicians who would do

the actual work. They could save or torpedo a sale.

Doesn’t it make sense to get these people on your side too?

This is one of the most powerful places that a strong network will support a sales

professional. By looking to build relationships beyond your prospects, you have a chance to

engage and connect with other centers of influence. Some of these people will be possible

referral partners. These are professionals who spend time in your prospects’ world, but aren’t a

prospect. For example, if you sell accounting software, you could pay attention to tax-attorneys

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that you might cross paths with. Any sales veteran knows that the best way to generate a lead is

through a warm referral. Cultivating these referral sources can be a great investment.

Also, the more complex your sales process, the more you should cultivate relationships

with the people around the decision-maker. This is simple to see in business-to-consumer sales,

where it’s important to get the buy-in of the spouse if you are only talking to one half of the pair.

In the business-to-business world there’s often up to five or ten other people who could influence

the process. Spend time connecting with those tangential actors who will influence the buying

decision. It can also be helpful to connect with industry experts who can give you credibility.

Every field has a small cadre of bloggers, social media personalities, and subject matter experts.

When possible, reach out them. You never know where a relationship with your industry’s top

blogger might lead you.

These centers of influence are your networking VIPs. These people are golden, and you

should always be looking for ways to add them to your network and find ways to take care of the

ones that you have. To find and nurture these VIP relationships, there are a few steps to keep in

mind.

1. Be clear about who you are looking for.

Who are the people that will have the most impact on your results? This will depend

a lot on your particular situation. A way to approach this is to ask yourself what kind

of people could impact your business the most if they were either raving fans or

stalwart opponents. If you have a relatively short, high-turnover sales process, then

referral partners might be worth focusing on. If you sell into the HR department at

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your prospective clients, but you know that Marketing gets involved, spend some

time cultivating relationships over there. A little strategy here will go a long way.

2. Create consistent and regular engagement with your centers of influence.

Since they can have a huge impact on your business, you don’t want to leave your

interactions up to chance. Don’t sit back and hope that they will think about you.

You also don’t want to be a pest and monopolize their time – that’s irritating. Find a

good balance where you can reach out to them consistently so that you stay top of

mind, but not so much that you are an annoyance.

3. Find ways to provide value to your VIPs.

This might take a little creativity on your part, because most of these people aren’t

going to be directly engaged in the same day-to-day activities like your prospects and

clients are. Creating value for these people can be as simple as sharing industry news

that might touch on their world. You could also be a connector and help introduce

them to people that can help them with the challenges they’re working on. Just be

open to helping and on the lookout for ways to be of service.

4. Make it really easy for them to support you.

Whether it’s sending a prospect your way, or giving a thumbs-up to your proposal,

you want to make it easy for them to support you. Make yourself available to them

when they reach out. It might not happen often, but when they do reach out, be easy

to work with. Be prompt in your communication and give that little bit extra. Taking

care of people who are not your direct customers is just good business…and it has a

tendency to get back to people who can buy from you.

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Jaime Develops Brand Ambassadors

If he approached this part of his business well, Jaime knew he would be able to justify the

investment of time and energy into his networking. There were a lot of moving parts in his

deals, so if he could strengthen his relationships with any of the players that were involved, it

would help.

When he first thought about the most important people in his network, he was surprised

to realize that they weren’t external professionals, they were internal. Whenever he got to a

certain point in working with a potential client, he would have to engage with his company’s

client-relations team. They would map out how the business process would unfold over time and

bring together the engineers and project managers on both sides of the table. There were a few

key leaders in that department that Jaime hadn’t spent a lot of time with, but if he got to know

them, it could only help.

He also thought about his biggest existing clients, the ones that represented the largest

percentages of his portfolio. Even though he had most of his conversations with the IT

departments, at some point, the finance team would get involved. He had always taken a

relatively defensive posture to prepare for their arrival, but he thought that there were a few key

people that he could reach out to proactively. This was especially critical because he did a lot of

business with their companies and he wanted to be around for a long time.

Looking at the influencers in his industry, he thought of a blogger that he had followed

for the past few years who had carved out a niche as a journalist on all topics Internet of Things

related. He thought that it would be great to connect, so he shot out an email. The worst that

could happen is that the blogger would ignore it. But instead, she returned his message and they

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started an online correspondence. It was great to get her perspective and she shared cutting-edge

information he could use on his sales presentations.

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Tactic 8 – Integrating Your Offline and Online Presence

The process of bringing social media into your sales process is relatively new, but it’s not

going away any time soon. “Social selling” is here to stay. Whether you are a 30-year sales

veteran or millennial saleswoman fresh onto the scene, digital communication is profoundly

altering how you engage and communicate. You better believe it is changing how we buy and

sell. There are a lot of definitions for social selling floating around. This isn’t the book to dive

into all of the nuances of how you should be using digital platforms in your sales and networking

processes, but at the very least you have to pay attention to how your presence online is

integrating with your real-world activities.

These days you can’t hide online. There’s no such thing as a digital ghost. Something

that will be important to consider is the brand message that you are sharing online. This will

have an impact on your sales process as well as your networking. How will people judge you

when they come across your online presence? Will your LinkedIn profile encourage them to

reach out or to take a pass? Will your tweets spark a dialog or leave the person wanting? Should

you even be on these platforms? How can you pick and choose which sites you want to

participate on?

The answers depend on what your overall goals are and how your online presence

interacts with your offline relationships. When we think about using social media for

networking, keep in mind that it hinges on human-to-human communication. Even when you are

connecting with people professionally, you are still connecting with other humans: individuals

who want to connect on an authentic level.

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Social media is a broad spectrum of tools and platforms, and you will use them

differently when you are marketing vs. recruiting vs. selling vs. networking. As far as building a

network of relationships, there are a few key places to leverage social media.

1. You need to have a robust, optimized LinkedIn profile.

It is the preeminent platform for online business networking. When people Google

you, your profile will likely come up on the first page, which means that they’ll click

through and gather their first impressions from what you have (or don’t have) on

LinkedIn. More and more, we are researching the people we engage with before we

reach out, whether it’s for sales or networking. Make sure that what you say on your

LinkedIn profile aligns with what you share in face-to-face conversations.

2. Create a cohesive message.

Use your LinkedIn profile, along with any other online properties, like a Twitter bio

or Pinterest board, to support the story that is shared through your company’s web

presence. When all of these sites align with each other, it reinforces your overall

message. You want to create a passive, self-referential online ecosystem. Passive:

always available for people to view without you actively engaging. Self-referential:

all of the material points to other online information that communicates your brand

message.

3. Focus where you can maintain.

You don’t have to join all of the platforms, but make sure you put time and attention

into any platform that you do join. Whether it’s LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest,

Facebook, Snapchat, or the new site du jour, avoid setting up an account that never

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gets used. If there’s a platform that is popular with your network, but you don’t have

the time to use it, create an account with one piece of information: “I don’t spend a lot

of time here. Come visit me at my LinkedIn profile at www.linkedin.com.”

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Jaime Connects His Online and Offline Brands

When you work in a high-tech field it’s embarrassing to realize that your digital footprint

is lacking, but that’s exactly what Jaime had to contend with. He heard more and more about

social media, but he didn’t know how he was supposed to put it into his sales conversations, and

he certainly didn’t know how to put it into his networking relationships. It was easier just to

avoid it and do the bare minimum. But he knew he had to change if he wanted to bring in new

connections…especially because he hadn’t even updated his LinkedIn profile since he had gotten

his new position.

He started by giving some needed attention to his LinkedIn profile. He had always just

looked at it as a resume. Most of his profile copy was left over from when he was looking for a

job and it was full of the sales numbers and statistics that had been important to potential

employers. It didn’t really speak to what he was currently focused on in his position, which was

probably a turn-off for his prospects and networking partners. He spent time rewriting his profile

so that it reflected the ways that he and his firm helped their clients, paying close attention to the

summary and headline. He also updated the photo (which was over five years old). When he

was finished, he had his company put his custom profile URL on his business card so the people

he met offline could find it easily.

Once he had a robust profile, he made sure to connect it with the company website. He

even brought in a paragraph from the company page and added it to his Current Experience

section on LinkedIn. He also added a line to his Twitter bio that referenced his sales position

and added the company URL. Since most of his network would be on these two platforms, he

was comfortable that he had his bases covered and felt a lot more confident in how he was

“showing up” online.

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Tactic 9 - Embracing Social Selling Activities for Networking

Updating your LinkedIn and other social media profiles is an important first step in the

networking process. With just a small investment in time and energy, however, social media

platforms can have a powerful impact on your relationships and the opportunities that arise from

them. Digital tools can be a great way to leverage your message and scale your conversations.

It’s a way to maintain a large number of weak connections over an extended period of time

without being swamped.

In developing an approach to online networking, it can be worthwhile to look at the

approaches that are used in “social selling”. Whether you are building relationships to drive a

sales process forward or create a web of trusted connections, there are important and simple

activities that can create long-term value. You don’t have to spend hours a day on social media

to make this process effective. It’s more important to be strategic and consistent with your

efforts, and there are a few key areas where online activities can help you leverage your time.

1. Replicate your network online.

Social media platforms are a great way to stay in touch with your network, but you

can only do that if you are connected online. Whenever possible, look to have your

online connections mirror your offline connections. Sites like LinkedIn even allow

you to import existing contact lists. You don’t have to keep separate networks. You

can let the offline and online world mix and mingle.

2. Use social media to listen.

Sharing content online is powerful, but listening to your network is just as important a

part of being “social”. Pay attention to what your network is talking about and use

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that information to have better conversations online and offline. Think of the old

adage “you have two ears and one mouth in that proportion for a reason” and apply

that to your online activity.

3. Use social media for research.

One of the biggest complaints about social media is that there is too much

information available and it can be overwhelming. That can certainly be true, but the

flipside is that it’s a great tool to research your networking partners because there is

so much information available. Use their social media profiles, their status updates,

and other online social activity to discover ways that you can help them, and ways

that they could help you.

4. Find new connections.

Digital platforms remove one of the biggest barriers that networkers faced in the past:

geography. Before digital communication, you could only connect with people that

you came into contact with in the course of your daily activities. Now, you can

connect with people around the globe. While you might not want to accept invites

from people you don’t know, it can be worthwhile to approach a few aspirational

connections, i.e. people that you don’t know offline that you would like to have in

your network. This is great chance to connect with people who are in the same

industry or niche that you are, no matter where they are.

5. Share content with your network.

When you have a robust network, and you’ve spent the time developing a strong

foundation, be sure to post material online. You don’t have to limit yourself to

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information about your products and services. You can open the door and share other

relevant information on your areas of interest or expertise, or simply information that

would be of value to your network. The key is to put your message out there in order

to stay on people’s radars and create new connections.

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Jaime Rescues Social from Being a Waste of Time

Once he had spent time optimizing his LinkedIn presence, Jaime realized that he was

missing out on some opportunities to stay in touch with his network. In the past, he had

rationalized his resistance to using social media for business as a way to keep from wasting time.

Now he saw ways to spend time with his network online that would actually lead to more

business opportunities. He still wasn’t completely comfortable using social media with his

clients and prospects, so he could practice his digital activities with his network instead. That

way, if he really screwed up, it wouldn’t hurt his business too much.

He knew that his time would be at a premium so he wanted to focus his online

networking on just a few sites. He decided that LinkedIn would be a good place to start because

Facebook was too personal for his comfort. He also created a Twitter account, but it wasn’t his

main focus area. He started by scheduling two 15-minute blocks of time every week to read

through his LinkedIn newsfeed and “like” a few posts. He thought it would be hard to do, but it

became something that he would do every day when he finished lunch. He also loaded the

LinkedIn and Twitter apps on his phone so that he could use his downtime to do some work

when waiting for clients or for his daughter to get out of ballet class. While he didn’t post much

on Twitter, he had his assistant show him how to create Twitter lists, so that he could just read

the updates from some of the experts in his field.

He had always been interested in industry news, so he decided to start sharing articles

that he thought were relevant to his network. He signed up for Buffer, which helped him parse

out his posts online (he tended to read a lot articles at once and didn’t want to overload his

connections). That way they would get a consistent drip of articles about the Internet of Things,

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digital transformation, software, and business. And every once in a while he would throw in

something about the Muscular Sclerosis Society, where he volunteered. This way, he had a

consistent presence online that kept him top of mind with his network. (For more ideas on how

to share online, see Networking in the 21st Century…on LinkedIn).

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Tactic 10 –Building Manageable Processes

A big obstacle that keeps salespeople from networking effectively is time, or rather, lack

of it. Jam-packed schedules not only keep them from finding and starting relationships, but they

get in the way of cultivating them. As you’ve seen, the biggest networking benefits come from

relationships that are long-term and do require some nurturing. If you are going to be successful

with your long-term follow-up, it’s imperative that you develop an easy to use follow-up system.

Instead of having to re-invent the wheel with every new contact you make, you can let the

process you’ve developed do the work for you.

Whatever system you create, there are a few key elements to keep in mind:

1. It has to be easy.

If each step takes you longer than 2-3 minutes, you aren’t going to execute on it.

Writing down extensive notes on each person you meet at a networking event might

seem great, but if it takes too long to do, you’ll put it off. And then you end up with a

stack of business cards on your desk and a lot of frustration.

2. It has to be integrated.

The best approaches to networking will incorporate activities and tools that you

already use. If you have to learn a new online platform, or buy a fancy gadget, it’s

probably not going to work. For example, if you don’t use Twitter at all, don’t force

it into your follow-up plan

3. It has to make things easier for you.

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The whole point of having a system is to automate the work for you. Whether it

makes your contact list more searchable or brings follow-up reminders to your

attention, you want to unload some of the mental work to your system and

technology. This is how you will be able to maintain your network and still get work

done.

When it’s created correctly, a good networking follow-up system allows you to leverage

your time. By putting in a little effort up front, it helps you in the long run. There are many

ways to structure a successful follow-up process. Here is a possible path:

1. Meet someone at a networking event or through a referral

2. Enter their information in your CRM system

3. Send them a follow-up email the next day saying it was nice to meet them (use a template

for this)

4. Unless there is a reason not to, send an invitation to connect on LinkedIn

5. Put them into one of three “categories”:

a) Schedule a coffee meeting or phone call with them

b) Create a reminder to touch base with them in 1-6 months

c) No follow-up needed

6. After coffee meetings and phone calls, send a 2-4 sentence hand-written note

7. Post 2-3 status updates a week on LinkedIn about client successes and other industry-

related information

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8. Every Thursday, send an email, LinkedIn message, or tweet to the people who popped up

on your “contact every 1-6 months” list (or just call them)

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Jaime’s Follow-Up Process

Follow-up. Now here was something that Jaime already had in place. Some days it

seemed that all he did was check in with prospects and clients. Adding this in for his networking

partners wouldn’t be a huge shift.

The first step was to bring them into his “pipeline”. Even though his networking partners

weren’t on the road to being clients, he knew that if he had a way to bring them into his process,

then he would have a way to keep in touch with them over time. He already had an effective

CRM in place; he just had to expand who he tracked in it. He created a new category that was

specifically for people he wanted to build relationships with who were not in the prospect or

client bucket. He then made sure that when he met someone new, he would enter them into the

system (with his handy business card reader). He would reach out on LinkedIn to invite them

into his network, and he would include a customized “nice to meet you” message. He also

created an email template that he could use to reach out to them if he didn’t have a chance to

connect through social media.

He wanted to make sure that he was having conversations with people on an on-going

basis, but he didn’t want to add in another hurdle that he would have to track down. He decided

that he would set a reminder to reach out to each contact either 1 month, 2 months, or 6 months

after he had met them, depending on the level of connection he had created. At the very least, he

would just send them a personalized email. Even just a few lines to say hello and stay connected

would be better than nothing. He would do all of his follow-up on Friday after lunch – it was a

slower time and it would be more fun (and probably more effective) than trying to hammer out

any last minute prospecting calls for the week.

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Tactic 11 - Connect These Tactics to Your Larger Goals

We’ve only unpacked a few of the tactics from Networking in the 21st Century, but you

now have a solid foundation for moving forward. There’s over 20 more that you can still dive

into! The most important thing to remember when networking: be intentional. Too often,

professionals throw their networking energy around willy-nilly, and have little to see for it.

Haphazard networking creates haphazard results. At the beginning of the book, we looked at a

simple definition of networking:

Networking is building a web of relationships with others for mutual support in finding

business solutions.

We started with that definition because I wanted you to be able to connect the strategies

and tactics with your overall networking goals. It’s the same reason we started the tactics section

by creating a networking plan; it helps to create a framework for all of your activity. My goal in

writing this book was to relate a few of the strategies and tactics I cover in Nit21C to the real-life

scenarios that we encounter as sales professionals. It’s not meant to be comprehensive, but

rather it’s designed to give you a place to start your journey.

To understand the larger context on why you’ve been struggling to build your network up

to this point, I encourage you to get a copy of Nit21C (it’ll be worth it, I promise). More

importantly, you’ll also find more information there on how to improve your network, including

key strategies such as:

1. Learning how you can succeed at networking whether you are an extrovert or an

introvert.

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2. Finding out about the key role that personal development plays in your networking.

3. Understanding how your brain is wired to work against building a large network and

how to change your approach to set yourself up for success.

You’ll also learn more tactics, including how to:

1. Have a conversation with anyone, anytime.

2. Network with your competition.

3. Reach out to ask for help comfortably and easily.

4. Ask questions to uncover new business opportunities.

5. Begin and end conversations at events.

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Concluding Thoughts

When I speak to audiences, I often finish by showing a picture of a field of ripe wheat,

and I talk about the approach that farmers take to growing crops. They don’t plant a seed and

then come back the next day expecting a full-grown harvest. They understand that it’s a process

that starts with the seeds, but requires cultivation and attention over time to see the true benefits.

Reading about networking without taking action would be like a farmer reading about

growing crops. It doesn’t create results by itself. You have to take action. You have to plant

seeds and then nourish what you’ve planted. You can have a fertile field of people to engage

with. You just need the faith of the farmer who knows that there will be a payoff in the end. The

more effort you put in now, the more rewards you can reap in the future.

So now it’s back on you – what are you going to do with this information? The fate of

your career now, and in the future, is in your hands. There are many things in life and business

that you don’t control, but your activities are one of things that you do. I wish you the best of

luck.

Happy Networking!

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Additional Resources

You can get your print, digital, or audio copy of Networking in the 21st Century:

Why Your Network Sucks and What to Do About It on Amazon.com:

Get it Here!

Another popular book from the series is Networking in the 21st Century…on LinkedIn. It is

filled with ideas on how to improve your online networking and it’s also on Amazon.com:

Learn LinkedIn!

Visit the exclusive home page for the readers of this book at:

Sales Professional Networking

It’s full of tools and tips for making networking a valuable part of your professional life. If you

have any questions for me, or networking ideas that I missed, I’d love to hear from you!

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About the Author

David J.P. Fisher lives in Evanston, Illinois, next to a beautiful cemetery, which acts as a

reminder every morning to not take life for granted (and be on the lookout for zombies). He is an

entrepreneur, coach, salesman, writer, meditator, marketer, musician, podcast, son, friend,

brother, slam poet, clairvoyant, comedian, salsa dancer, lover of life, teller of bad jokes, yoga

enthusiast, and an average cook—as long as it’s pancakes or hummus.

Known as D. Fish to everyone (except his mom), he is a sought-after speaker, author, and

business coach. His first full-length book, Networking in the 21st Century: Why Your Network

Sucks and What to Do About It, and its companion book series, have all been Amazon best-

sellers. His passion for growth and development has allowed him to influence thousands of

others during his professional career. As the current president of RockStar Consulting, he helps

individuals become RockStars both offline and online by building their networking, sales, and

entrepreneurial skills.

You can find him online at all the usual places:

Website: www.iamdfish.com

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/iamdfish

Twitter: @dfishrockstar

Stop by and say hello!

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Acknowledgments

The first thank you as always goes to you the reader. There are a lot of things you could

do with your time, and I’m honored that you gave me a bit of your attention.

I’ve had many mentors on my sales journey, and Adam Stock, Mike Muriel, and Danny

Lewis all taught me how to sell by building great relationships…which made the transition to

networking even simpler. My early days selling Cutco knives continue to influence me and my

career, and I learned so much by hanging out with amazing salespeople like Jamie Zimbroff,

Sheryl Stahura, Katie Fingerhut, Demian Scopp, Mishelle Zeyda, Matt Long, Lukasz Wojcik,

and so many more.

Debbie O’Byrne created yet another awesome cover.

Colette, Chrissie, Amy, Rob, Brian, Joe, and all of my other friends continue to be a

fantastic network!

And Helen, thank you for being the best demanding flower, dainty trucker, whining

burrito, and partner I could ask for.