How to create a winning networking strategy ? Stage 3 | Joined Up ...

A networking strategy will make a huge difference to your networking. Today it?s time to focus on finding the right relationships for your network.

This is stage 3 of the process. In stages 1 and 2 you identified the networking ?big? goals you have for all the roles and facets of your life, plus what will you will do with your current network and current networking activities to achieve your networking ?big? goals.

In today?s blog post, we will be looking at what you need to do to ?find? the right relationships for your network.

Does George Clooney go networking?

I often tell a story when delivering a keynote or masterclass on effective business networking about George Clooney. The story goes as follows:

?People are always asking me who I want to me ? I guess this is an occupational hazard of writing a book on networking! I always answer, George Clooney. People always wonder why I answer George Clooney? The fact is, my ultimate goal is to become a kept woman. George Clooney, represents someone who could short cut my way to achieving this goal.?

Everybody has people like George in their network, people than can help you create a shortcut to to achieving your goals. Typically these are people who are exceptionally well connected to your target market. Sometimes, it may not be obvious. For example, one of my George?s is a good friend called Mike Fieldhouse, who owns and runs a digital marketing agency, Reality House. Now, when I tell you that his agency specialises in working with lawyers and accountants, does it become slightly clearer (given my professed specialism in working with lawyers and accountants) why Mike is actually a ?George? for me? Referrals from Mike made up ~15% of my company?s turnover in 2012.

Your Network Map

Now, go back to your network map that you drew up in the audit stage of this process. Who are the people who can help you achieve your networking goals who are not yet on your map? At this stage, you may not know their name but know their company name and likely role. Or you may just know that you are looking out for someone who is well connected to your target market, and likely to be involved in these types of activities.

Your task at this stage in the process of defining your networking strategy is to brainstorm and identify the following:

• activities which will bring you into contact with your ?George?s and missing connections on your networking map
• where your George may hang out ? both online and offline

Now, rank all the activities by which ones are most likely to help you bump into the people you need to add into your network. Pick the top 3-5 activities to focus on, and add these into your daily, weekly and monthly networking activity plan.

Now that we have identified how to ?find? the people you need in your network, the next stage of the process is to decide how you will pro-actively build the right relationships.

In our next blog post we will look at the next stage in the process, categorising the relationships in our network. Come back soon?.

Source: http://joinedupnetworking.com/how-to-create-a-winning-networking-strategy-stage-3/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-create-a-winning-networking-strategy-stage-3

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