Typical Networking Meeting: It is all Good!
You’re at lunch, or having a cup of coffee with a networking opportunity. The purpose of the get together was to see how you could help one another to advance your respective business or organization. It is something that smart business leaders do everyday because we are in a networked economy and if we want to move our organizations forward, it is easier with a little help than trying to go at it alone.
This isn’t some new thing. People have networked to better companies forever, it is just evolving rapidly since we are now more connected due to technology and social media bringing us together.
Anyhow, you have this meeting, and more times than not networking meetings are great. It is always great to sit down with like minded people and pursue growth hacking ideas. Heck, I even enjoy making connections that don’t benefit me. (I’m a big karma guy).
At the end of the meeting you look at one another and you run down the ways that you have talked about helping out…
I’m going to send an email to “Bob” and connect you two because I just know that you guys would be a perfect fit to work together. Then they tell you how they are going to introduce you to “Jane” and “Terry” because they could definitely benefit from hearing about what you are doing. You close up your notebooks, ipads or gizmogadet and you exit stage right. Great meeting!
Afterward I head home and immediately make the introduction I promised and I wait for reciprocity, but too often…N-O-T-H-I-N-G
Time Passes and Networking Was More Art than Science
A few days/weeks/months go by and you send a note…”Hey, great catching up/meeting/sharing war stories, it would be fantastic if you could send that introduction to Jane and Terry for me. Often a few days later a note comes back. “Oh yeah, so sorry, I’ve been super busy and I didn’t have a chance, I’ll do it soon. And often times that is exactly what happens.
So in the end it is all good. The connections are made, everyone got what they were looking for and the world of networking continues to go around.
However, may I make a suggestion or two to improve networking experiences?
First, don’t make promises or commitments that you don’t have time or a real desire to make. Second, if you do make a promise or commitment then take care of it in a timely fashion.
I know that may have sounded a bit terse, since after all, you are volunteering to help. But the thing is, handling matters like this in a timely fashion is both the professional and human thing to do. In the future, your networks will continue to get larger in size but smaller in distance so everyone will (seemingly) know everyone. Therefore, being good to your word is going to become an even more valuable asset.
And perhaps more than anything else, just do what you say you’re going to do. It is the best way on the planet to be seen as helpful and reliable.
If everyone would just subscribe to this it would make every one of those coffee meetings just a little bit more worth their while.
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