Every savvy business person understands that a key to growing your business involves expanding and deepening relationships.  The next series of blog entries will focus on the essential business practice of networking.  Today, more than ever, your ability to create and sustain a rich, deep and lasting network is central to your long term success.  Yet, before I start discussing the what and how of networking – I want to step back and talk about why networking is so powerful.  Because highlighting this foundation will allow you to be far better prepared to take full advantage of your network.

First attending networking events and being able to clearly articulate what you have to offer is not the foundation of networking.  Certainly attending networking events as well as being able to clearly articulate your value is important but these are tactical areas that support something more important.  Networking is founded on the following principles:

1. As mentioned in the outset of this entry, to become a consummate net-worker you must hold the fundamental belief that relationships are what drive your business and personal success.   If you do not hold this as a fundamental belief you will not have much success networking.
2. Relationships can be boiled down to being a series of conversations that when done well lead to deeper value and trust. The core driver of conversations, whether they be business or personal, is the innate desire to forward something of importance.  The way we move things forward is through the commitments we make with each other.
3. At any given point, most executives have a series of concerns that are open. Meaning – they have yet to reach commitments with anyone that will allow them to leverage specific opportunities or mitigate their most nagging challenges.  It is also important to realize that every concern that an executive has open is not of equal priority.  Most savvy executives are more or less aware of their priorities and eager to take action to resolve them.
4. Most executives tend to make a large amount of their commitments with people they know, trust and like. Again, when you are highly involved with your network [whether it be through a networking organization (e.g. your local chamber), conversations with clients, your volunteer work, etc] you will tend to establish a natural rapport that allows for deeper concerns to be more openly expressed.  Developing this rapport and being present to listen puts you in the position to be helpful!
   
5. By placing yourself in the right networking circles – you can develop rapport with a broad range of people and create a reputation that generates a lot of business opportunity.
6. Networking will start baring fruits once you are perceived as a go to person who can:
   1. Solve deep and complex issues in the area of your expertise.
   2. Refer a broad range of resources that can assist other executives outside your realm of expertise.
   3. Be a skilled sounding board to help clarify and prioritize issues for others.
   4. Expand people’s thinking about an issue.

As mentioned earlier – your job in networking involves far more than making sure people know you and what you do – your primary purpose is to become known as a high value resource with a lot to give. When you become known as such a resource – business will come more regularly and at times from resources you never even considered.  Why – because someone in your network started a conversation and you became the resource they referred!   Now that we have set a more powerful context for how to view networking – the next entry in this series will focus on helping you develop a clear strategy for your networking efforts.

Tags: Influence, Interpersonal Engagement, networking, sales

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Executive Engagement, Interpersonal Engagement, Strategic Engagement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.