High-ROI Networking

One of my favorite quotes from The Virtual Handshake is this:

People who know how to leverage their networks are called successful. People who just know a lot of people are called socialites. Do you want to be a successful person or a socialite?

I address this in more detail in my latest American Express OPEN Forum article, High-ROI Networking:

Networking is addictive. For the most part, that’s not entirely a bad thing. Networking is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing, plus all the benefits to other areas of your business. But there is a potential dark side: It can become a huge time drain without producing proportionate results.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of networking. For starters, there’s generally no rejection. In fact, you’ve probably been to a networking event or two that felt kind of like a post-modern hippie lovefest. Networking simply feels better than most activities that we can engage in under the umbrella of "doing business."

Also, networking pretty much always works… eventually. And that’s the first step on the slippery slope. See, once you have a taste of success from networking, it becomes a validation of whatever networking strategy and activities you’ve engaged in. Whatever you’ve been doing is working, so you obviously just need to do more of the same to get more results, right? It’s self-validating, and that’s why it’s so addictive.

What if someone could show you a way to get double, triple, quadruple the results from your networking activities? Surprisingly, many avid networkers don’t even want to take a look. They’ve already adopted the "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" philosophy.

Continue reading at OPEN Forum