Whether you’re the founder of a startup or a seasoned executive, your professional network plays a pivotal role in your ability to succeed.
Here are a few reasons why:
Networking is clearly critical, however, for many professionals, it’s the most challenging aspect of achieving their goals. These five proven and actionable networking strategies will help drive your success.
Reading is one of the easiest and most underestimated networking strategies. Doing it often makes you a more effective networker by:
To obtain the full benefits, you need to expand your content consumption from just your favorite blogs and news sites to a broad array of topics that may appeal to the varied interests of the people you meet. The easiest way to do this is via content discovery tools.
Here are some popular options:
Keep in mind that it’s not just educational, nonfiction content that’s worth reading. There is immense value in reading character-focused fiction and nonfiction stories.
Studies show that reading stories about people improves your emotional intelligence. When you envision the scenarios people undergo in stories, your brain lights up as if you were experiencing the events yourself. This increases your empathy and general ability to relate to other people by exposing you to a wider range of circumstances and emotional responses.
Action Steps:
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Studies show that body language accounts for about half of the messages that we communicate with other people. When you’re strategizing about ways to grow your network, you need to consider how your nonverbal cues are affecting people’s perception of you.
Here are some body language tips from the Global Listening Centre to get you started:
Keep in mind that these actions are just a starting point. To build be successful at networking, you need to have a strong understanding of the subconscious factors that drive your interactions with people.
Here are some resources to help you learn new networking strategies based on body language and other psychological principles:
As you learn more about body language, you’ll figure out which tactics feel most natural for you to use.
Often, when people start focusing on improving their networking strategies it’s because they need more connections to achieve a business goal - earn more sales, attract investors, recruit better talent, etc. While these are all great times to start networking, these goals often inhibit people’s success.
If you approach every person you meet focused on telling them about yourself and convincing them to give you what you need, you’re going to fail at networking. To successfully develop new connections, you need to be genuinely interested in getting to know the people you meet.
A Harvard study found that talking about ourselves activates the same part of our brain as sex, drugs, and eating delicious food. When you ask questions to encourage people to share their stories with you, it creates an enjoyable interaction for them and helps them remember you in a positive light.
Plus, the more you learn about people in your first interaction, the easier it is to foster a lasting connection with them. Gaining a deeper understanding of people’s work and interests gives you a variety of topics you can follow-up with them on to continue your conversation.
Action Steps:
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Successfully establishing a strong professional network requires a significant time and energy investment.
Meeting new people is easy. The challenging part of networking is maintaining relationships with all of your new contacts. To do this, you need to put systems in place to ensure you stay in-touch.
Here are some networking strategies to help you foster lasting professional connections:
You should have two types of cadences:
The first is for connections who have something important and time-sensitive coming up. For example, a new product launch, a vacation, or something else with a specified date. Set a reminder to follow-up with them after those events occur.
The second is for people without anything big coming up. Put a note in your calendar or CRM to follow-up with them every four to six weeks.
Having follow-up notes in your calendar prevents you from losing touch with valuable connections.
Action Steps:
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If you’re networking because you need something - referrals, investors, a job, etc. the most effective strategy to obtain it is to offer people favors first. Thanks to the reciprocity principle of psychology, most people feel a strong need to reciprocate when someone helps them.
Helping people doesn’t always have to be time-consuming. There are plenty of quick ways you can offer other people value. Here are some ideas:
Whenever opportunities arise for you to help a connection with tasks that aren’t overly time-consuming, take advantage of it. It’ll make your networking efforts worthwhile by incentivizing people to return the favor when you need help.
Action Steps:
If the amount of work required to implement the networking strategies in this article sounds daunting, consider hiring a virtual assistant. They can do all of the heavy-lifting including:
Action Step:
About the Author: Emily formerly led Prialto's content production and distribution team with a special passion for helping people realize success. Her work and collaborations have appeared in Entrepreneur, Inc. and the Observer among others.