If you ask people to describe networking you will get a variety of responses, most often it sounds something like this, “going to events where business people exchange business cards and talk business with one another.”  While indeed that is a good description of what a lot of “networking” events look like, it is not the only way that networking takes place.  People get so hung up on the formal side of networking that they completely miss all the other opportunities to network.  I personally spend far less time at “networking events” and far more time networking in ways that I enjoy.

Recently, I was invited to be part of #Social46.  This is a group of social media minded people who have strong networks, they were asked to support the Super Bowl 2012 committee in welcoming guest and helping them out using social media.  I was honored to be asked, and took advantage of the opportunity. Many of these are people I have heard of but never met in person, some I knew and have relationships with and still others I have never met online or offline.  This is the kind of networking that I enjoy, a group of people bound together for a common cause.

It does not take long to build strong relationships with people who have a common cause because you are all working and supporting one another to achieve that cause.  For this group there was the added excitement of being able to connect the city and the visitors, and being the first city to ever fully use social media in such a large event. I have a strong affinity for many of the participants, they are my role models on Social Media, and they are so giving of their time and efforts.  These are the kind of people I want in my network, who I want to learn more about, and who I feel good about referring to others because their “Givers Gain” attitude make them so referrable.

Working with a small group of people for a common cause is often far more effective that going month after month to big “networking” events.  Take a look a the networking that you are doing, how are you breaking out of the traditional mode and finding new ways to connect and build relationships?  Share some of your ideas with us!

Flirting:  to court trifling or act amorously without any serious intentions

Flirting is a basic instinct, part of human nature. This is not surprising: if we did not initiate contact and express interest in members of the opposite sex, we would not progress to reproduction, and the human species would become extinct. According to some evolutionary psychologists, flirting may even be the foundation of civilization as we know it. (www.sirc.org)

Flirting as you can see is a natural way of interacting for men and women. It is what we do, sometimes just for fun, other times with the intention to attract. So what is the harm in flirting when we are networking? Go to any networking event and you will see flirting, both men and women. Is it a bad thing? That would depend upon what you are going to the networking events for. What are you trying to achieve? One of the  biggest complaints that women have when working with and networking with men is that they are not taken seriously.

As a woman if I want men to take me and my business seriously, then I must first take myself and my business seriously. When women are flirting, men begin to see them in a different light than the professional light they want. While these women may indeed be asked for an appointment the complaint that we here from women is that the appointment was nothing more than a pretense for a date.

Over time other women will begin to exclude the flirt from their circle of information and connections. The constant flirting can often cost the flirt the credibility she seeks build when networking. Unfortunately, men who flirt are not held to the same level of accountability by women or men.

So, ladies, if you are flirting, it could be costing you connections, information, and being taken seriously by the very men you are flirting with. Remember that business networking should be treated as business, flirting at business functions should be avoided if you are looking to create high lever business relationships.

“In this economy, developing a strong referral strategy is a fast, easy cheap way to build a strong business,” Palzewicz said. “Referrals are more important than ever because people are more careful where they buy and the words of satisfied customers, especially customers that are their friends, can be very powerful and more impactful than any other type of advertising.”

As is my habit, I was reading blogs, press releases, and other material on networking, when I ran across the above quote in a press release. I become very frustrated when I read information that is incorrect or misleading, not intentionally misleading but written by someone who really does not understand what the referral process is.  McDonald’s is fast, easy and cheap, but you cannot apply that to a solid referral strategy.

 “In this economy, developing a strong referral strategy is a fast, easy, cheap way to build a strong business.” Nothing could be further from the truth. While networking might be considered fast easy and cheap, building a referral process takes time, it is a skill that must be learned, and requires a budget of time and money. When a client comes to me and wants to develop a referral strategy they must have a developed network that we can then develop into a proper referral strategy for their business.  McDonald’s is fast, easy and cheap, but it is not the first place you want to go if you are looking for a high quality meal.  While it is nice to sometimes have low level leads from fast, easy and cheap networking, it is not the way to sustain your business.

Let’s take a look at why the words of Fast, Easy, and Cheap cannot be related to developing a referral strategy.

 Fast – A solid referral strategy is based on a relationship built on trust. Trust takes time, you have to be willing to take the time to build the trust. People are not going to refer business to someone whom they do not trust to make them look good. How long it takes someone to trust you depends, ask yourself, do you trust fast?

Easy – Once you have your systems in place for your referral strategy, it does feel pretty easy. Getting those systems in place and maintaining them is not easy, fast, or cheap. If building a strong referral strategy were easy, there would be a lot more very successful businesses generating high quality referrals. I know this is not the case by the number of businesses that hire me to help them implement a strategy and systems.

 Cheap – Another big myth. If you are going to develop a referral system you must set a budget of both time and money. It is not cheap to belong to multiple organizations, have one to one meetings over coffee, lunch and even dinner, set up and implement a system of rewarding your referral partners, pay for travel to events and meeting, and get educated. Is it cheaper than running a TV Ad over and over, yes, is it cheap, no!

Anytime you go at something with the idea that it is fast, easy and cheap, you are bound to disappointed with your outcome.  Developing a referral strategy that works takes time, money and effort, but when it starts paying off, it pays in a big way.

In this economy everyone is looking for fast, easy, and cheap ways to build business, but if you apply that concept over a long period of time you are left with less that desired results.

Ladies we all know that building a strong business network is key to being the most successful in life and in business. Building a strong network requires two things, time and education, with the key requirement being time. After all it takes time to invest in our education.

Here is one tip to help you, learn to have a strong No! No, I cannot serve on the PTA Board this year. No, I cannot chair that fundraiser. No, I cannot take on that project at work. No, I cannot be the carpool mom for this activity. It is better to have a strong No than it is to have a weak Yes. A weak Yes ruins your credibility, and shows you as someone who only half commits. A strong No shows that you know you limitations and how to give effectively.

Take a look at what you are trying to accomplish, do your activities really support that? Instead of taking on new activities, take a look at the things that you are already doing and figure out how they are supporting you in building that network that you need. How much time are you spending at unproductive events? Would your time be better spent going to events where you know you will be able to connect with people already in your network? Do you really need to add more people right now?

Next ask yourself, how much time have you set aside for your personal and professional development? If you want to build a network of people who help you build a business you love, you need to set aside time to learn the skills it takes to build the relationships that help to build a business and life you love.

This week, take time to list all of your activities, how are they serving you? How are you serving them? Which of them do you need to give up? Where in your life, are you doing things out of a sense of duty versus a passion for the activity? Where in your life are you not really giving 100%?

When you do that, you will know what you need to give up and what you should say No to.

Business networking is about building relationships and who is better at building relationships than women. When it comes to networking there are a few things that women are just naturally better at then the men. There are things they can learn from us, just as there are things we can learn from them. In this blog, I am listing the 3 things that women do better than the men. The following blog will list the 3 things that men do better than women and the third in the series will discuss how we can learn from each other. So, before you men get all upset, be patient, you time to shine will be next, ladies first!

1. Women build deeper relationships with the people they meet than men do. That is not to say that men do not build relationships, they do, but they do it differently and they define it differently. This really plays out when men retire, once they are no longer working they have few close friends to do things with. Good networking is about building good relationships.

2. Women are excellent carriers of word-of-mouth. Women will sing your praises when you do a good job for them, and typically they are less likely to refer someone if they have not used or seen the quality of your work or product. When they do, no one will pass on the information better than a female.

3. Women by nature are collaborators, they build community. They will rally a group together to accomplish a goal or task. Where men are often lone wolves, women like to do things in groups. This plays very well in the business networking arena, it allows more people to win, when they are all working together.

 All of these are good traits, and each of them have a downfall. While it is important to build relationships, women often forget that they are building business relationships. Relationships that are meant to help, to be leveraged for business on both sides. We spend a lot of time building the relationships in the hope that they will do business with us, but we think that just because someone knows what we do, they will choose to use us when the need arises. That is a belief that often holds us back from creating the success in our business networking that we are looking for.

Next up: Three things that men do better than women!

There are 5 Steps to the referral process, as identified by the Referral Institute and Dr. Ivan Misner.  Each step is important and no step can be skipped,  if what you want are high level referrals that close into quality business. The biggest complaint that that I hear from is they are getting leads or nothing at all. I hear over and over how this organization or that one did not work because they only got leads that turned in to low value business or no business at all.   Blaming the organization for the lack of referrals is not productive, it all starts with you. Until you recognize that you cannot change the outcome.   Getting Referrals has little to do with the organization and everything to do with implementing the 5 Steps.

Each of the 5 Steps require a post of their own, so this is the beginning of the series of 7 articles.

Here are the 5 Steps to getting high value referrals from your network.

1. Trust, this is the biggest step and often the hardest.

2. Knowledge, a very small step, easy to achieve.

3. Need, is rarely if ever trained to referral sources.

4. Solution, you are the solution to the need but do your referral sources know how offer your solution?

5. The appointment, is the last and final step to teach, how do you want to be referred.

Each step is important and each step must be accomplished flawlessly. Unfortunately, no time or little time is spent on these steps and most people don’t even recognize that there is a system. So, stay tuned for the next 6 post, we will look at each of the steps in detail!

Referrals are the holy grail of the business community. Every business wants them, every business person is out networking in hopes of getting referred prospects for their business. Referrals come in different shades, just like the color red. The higher you can move the quality of the referral the less time you will need to spend it the sales process. Good referrals do not come quickly or easily. People must trust you if they are going to put their reputation on the line for you. After all, when you are being referred you are in essences borrowing that persons reputation and credibility.

If you want to move the quality of the referrals you get to a higher level here are 3 steps you can begin to implement with your network.

Build a deeper relationship with the person you are networking with. People want to do business with people they know, like and trust. Developing relationships built on trust takes time. Spend time finding out about what your partners are trying to accomplish, and help them accomplish it.

1. Know exactly how you want your network to refer you, then teach them how to do it. The more time that you spend training and being trained by your referral partners the better results you will get from them and they will get from you. If you want a face to face introdution then you must train your referral partners how to set that up for you.
2. Know who you want to be connected to. If you are telling your network that you want to be connected to anyone who, or everyone is a good connection then you are dropping the ball. Your network members want to help you but you have to make it easy for them.

Getting good referrals from your network requires work on your part, it requires time invested in your network, and it requires time to train your network. The more time you invest in the development of your network the more valuable the referrals will be when you get them.

I did a presentation today for the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, Business Growth Series.   I was asked the following question, How do you get connected to the decision maker of a company?

A good question and one that many people ask. The answer is simple, but it is not easy. Here is the answer for all of you who want to know the simple answer;   Ask you network to connect you.  There I told you it was simple, just ask.

Ah, but I also said, it was not easy.  Here is the rest of the answer.   There is a lot of work that must go into your network prior to asking and getting the connections.

1. You must develop your network – Too many business people spend all their time building these huge databases of people, constantly adding to it. They have very wide networks, but not very deep. Stop adding people to your network, take the time to identify the people in your network whom you need to really develop a relationship with. Go into your network and start working on building relationships.  See who is already referring you, find your key sources and connectors.  Spend time working in your network, develop the people you already know versus adding more people to the network.

2. Identify your key connectors. Who are they? In every network of people there are key connectors who will be able to connect you to a multitude of people you would not otherwise have the opportunity to meet. Build deeper relationships with your key connectors.

3.  Know who you want to be connected to.  This means you need to do a little homework and find out who this contact is you are after.  To often I hear “I want an introduction to the head of Marketing for the XYZ company.”    It would be more effective when asked this way:  ”I am looking for a personal introduction to David Jones, of the XYZ Company.”  Now your network knows who you want to be connected to and how you want to be connected.  They can easily look in their database and see if they know that person.   Most networkers never do the home work to identify who they want to know.

Friends who care about you are hard to find and should be held onto even when one screws up. There is always room for open honest communication and forgiveness. The hardest part is the open honest communication, and ASKING for Forgiveness then GIVING it!

I wrote the above statement and posted in on my Facebook Profile, because of the numerous comments I decided to write more here. The most important thing that we build in our lives are relationships, the people whom we call friends, those who help us, mentor, encourage and cheer us on. Now and then we screw up, do something wrong or hurt someones feeling and suddenly we find that we have caused great damage to the relationship. We may not have intended to do it, nevertheless we did. At this point we have a choice, let the relationship die or reach out and attempt to repair the relationship.

Repairing the relationship first requires open and honest communication. Both sides need to be willing to speak what is there without blame or excuses, to listen to one another. That communication should consist of 3 things.

Take Responsibility – don’t make excuses, don’t blame, just take responsibility. Part of taking responsibility is making sure you have taken steps not to repeat the action.

Ask for Forgiveness – asking for forgiveness is not easy. It is necessary if you want to recover your relationship. There is nothing more that needs to be said beyond “I take full responsibility for my actions and I ask for your forgiveness.”

Give Forgiveness – if you want others to forgive you when you screw up, and you will, be willing to Give Forgiveness. Forgiveness does not mean that you condone the action, you just release the anger, upset and disappointment and move forward.

People who really care about us don’t come along everyday. We are all human and in our humanity we screw up, it is our nature, but it does not mean that we have to give up the friendships we have created.

One of the first things I work with my clients on is the proper use of “Networking”, as well as the best ways to use their time and energy when they are networking. Over the last 15 years, I have watched people spend many hours networking. As a matter of fact I was one of those people. It is exactly how I got the moniker, “Queen of Networking”. One day, my mentor asked me to begin to track all my time. Time that I spent networking, time I spent answering the phone, emails, working on projects, surfing the net, and so on. This was an eye opening experience.   I found that most of the stuff I was doing was not having a positive impact on my business bottom line.

60% of all of my activities in a given week were around networking. Going to the events, following up with every single card that I collected, staying in contact via email and phone calls, screening and fielding emails and phone calls from people who met me while networking, signing up for other events, driving to events, preparing for the events and so forth and so on. You get the picture; I was a very busy lady. Busy does not equal profitable.

Once we had a clear understanding about where my time was going, it was now time to look at how much of that time was actually having a positive impact on my business bottom line. What became painfully clear is while 60% of my time was spent, adding people to my database, and networking, networking, networking, 80% of my income was coming from 10-12 people, 200 where people whom I knew, supported and referred and the other 3000 names and contacts in my database were just that – names and unfulfilled relationships.

The most important feedback that my mentor gave me was simply this statement; “Imagine what your business would look like if you spent 60% of your time nurturing the 10-12 people who are helping to grow your business.” It was a statement that would keep me up at night.

Today you will not find me at every event and when I attend a networking event, I do so very strategically. I have a goal in mind, a purpose to be fulfilled and connections to make for at least one of those 12 people who were helping me to build my business. When I network for others, my own business grows with very little effort on my part. I have the opportunity to see “Givers Gain” in action.   Before you go to your next networking event ask yourself the following questions:

• Where is most of my business coming from?
• Which organizations are producing results for my business?
• Who passes me the most business?
• What are my goals for the event?
• Who do I need to help?
• How can my networking activities help my referral sources?
• What is my networking budget in both time and money?