KamLibrary - Networking when you don’t need it

Before the global financial crisis, networking for NAMs was a casual, ad hoc process conducted offline in spare time.

Now with ‘networkees’ fighting for survival, and flooded with incoming overtures, networking entry-barriers are high, and anything other than one-to-one tailor-made communication can qualify as spam, resulting in blockage or binning. Moreover, because of the need to build up a reservoir of goodwill before attempting to elicit a commercially worthwhile response, the networking process needs to be started at least five years before being required…

Essentially, NAM-networking is a supportive system of sharing information, insights and services among individuals and groups having a common interest. In practice, networking at the highest level is an unselfish process, where an input-output relationship of no more than 90/10 at best can be expected… This means having sufficient patience to continue contributing to a personal network pool, and being satisfied with a collective response from no more than 10% of its members. In fact, networking is one of the few areas of management where quality of input is more important than output.

However, what should not be underestimated is the potential of such response. In terms of business development this one-in-ten response can generate sufficient new business to well cover the cost of networking. The key is to always ensure that all networking activities are measured against response achieved, not to check its output, but rather to ensure that sufficient input is being maintained to fulfil the 90/10 ‘rule’.

Effective networking means building and continuously topping up a reservoir or pool of goodwill, from which we draw occasionally, carefully and unselfishly.

Reciprocation, or the returning of a favour, even at the 10% rate, is crucial, if only to eventually cull the non-responders from the database. Their zero-response to your networking initiatives can simply indicate that they are not networkers, or that you are perhaps not pressing the right buttons. If you need the cooperation of non-responders in business, then find other ways of stimulating them, other than networking. Incidentally, seeking a one-for-one response rate is a KPI best left to the original leading-edge networkers, that well-known Sicilian dynasty with a fall-back stance of using horses’ heads to ensure 100% compliance with an offer that cannot be refused…

When it comes to networking within the customer, it is vital to develop four types of partner within the account. These include Insight Partners, who show and explain, but take no action on your behalf; Action Partners, who will work with you but not for you; Promoter Partners, who will promote your interests but are not ‘doers’; and Adviser Partners, who will guide you through the customer’s political systems, point you at supporters and away from those who delay, block ideas or simply make excuses. It can also be useful to cultivate the equivalent four types of network partner within your own organisation.

LinkedIn and other ‘auto-networking’ tools, have not made networking easier, in fact their ease-of-use has encouraged the spread of bad networking. Flooding acquaintances’ mailboxes with undifferentiated invitations breaks all the rules of Godin’s Permission Marketing (see Seth Godin’s Blog), a process whereby a networker earns the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. Real permission works like this: if you stop showing up, people complain, they even ask where you went.

In fact, undifferentiated invitations carry an additional risk of being treated as spam and can result in being barred by the recipient, often without ever knowing why… (see KamTips in September NamNews for tips on optimising response from LinkedIn).

However, perhaps one of the most insidious abuses of the LinkedIn facility is the practice of seeking or accepting invitations and then restricting access only to ‘shared contacts’, despite gaining full access to the new partner’s network. Whilst discovering contacts-in-common can be of vague interest to a partner, restricting access in this way can send a massive signal of selfishness to the other party, when good networking demands the opposite.

Finally, to place high level networking in perspective, it is important to operate with a pool of sufficient size. Professional networkers have concluded that a network of 400 members optimises the process. They build and maintain a pool of approximately 400 members, never more and not much less. Every day they feed their networks with up to four dedicated emails, four phone-calls and four face-to-face contacts, minimum. As the network comes on stream, new, more responsive members are recruited to replace non-responders, thus maintaining a productive total of 400, as part of the ‘fourmula’ for success.

Anything less may help to build some business, but is not networking….

For KamTips on 'How to build a network you don’t ‘need', see NamNews - September 2011

Date article published: October 2011

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