Next Level Executives

I recently developed a presentation titled “Integrating Your Offline and Online Networking Efforts” in which I outline the benefits of having your face to face and face in screen networking work in concert with one another. One of the key elements of the talk focuses on the “who” part of networking for business.

The people in your network are perhaps the most important part of the equation. If networking is all about word of mouth marketing then the mouth must be considered of supreme importance. In order to help you evaluate your networking team I developed the following list of five fundamentals for you and your networking partners:

1. Likability - It seems simple and logical but I am amazed at how many people fail the first test of getting into my network. If I don’t like you then I am certainly not going to open my contact list for you. So be likable. Not fake and annoyingly perky but rather someone who others enjoy being around. Below are a couple of dos and don’ts.

• Do: Smile, be friendly, and be interested in the other person. It also helps to be open and generous with your network. Remember he or she just may introduce you to a big client some day.
• Don’t: Complaining about your job, your spouse, your kids, or the economy and so on is no fun for your networking partner. Try not to dump on people. If you are having trouble with what is unlikable behavior read “The No Asshole Rule” by Robert Sutton and you’ll get the gist.

2. Familiarity - Have you ever had to give a referral with a qualification that sounds a little like this, “He seems like a nice guy. I met him at some event.”? The problem is that even though you like the person, you just don’t know him well enough to add much value to the connection. This is where familiarity comes in. You need to interact with your networking partners frequently enough to develop a level of comfort and to some extent business intimacy. Below is a short list of things you can do that will enhance your familiarity with your networking partners:

• Join or form a networking team that meets locally. Seeing people in person on a regular basis is the fastest way to develop a real relationship.
• Encourage your networking partners to participate with you in a common online social network. The more active each of you are the more familiar with each other (and your respective businesses) you’ll become. If you are looking for a free place to start head on over to the Next Level community site and set up your profile. We’ll get you up and running with some great people.
• Start using Twitter and invite your networking partners to do the same. Twitter’s fast moving and easy to use style makes it the perfect tool to keep up to date with your network partners for business and for fun. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com wrote a great primer on getting started with Twitter. Once you have set up your Twitter account be sure to follow me and I’ll follow you back. Note: As a side benefit your tweets can add some punch to your search engine rankings.

3. Trust - You’ve heard the saying that “it’s not who you know but who knows you.” I recently amended this statement to “it’s not who knows you but who trusts you” because when it comes to doing business it is all based on trust. Liking you and knowing you quickly become irrelevant if you prove yourself untrustworthy. And while many people say that trust is earned I actually believe that trust is assumed until violated. So be a good guy and act responsibly. This being said there are a few things you can do to enhance your trust metric within your network:

• Ask your LinkedIn connections for recommendations. Testimonials from customers and recommendations from colleagues here offer very public stamps of approval of you and your business.
• Get your link love on. Be sure to ad links to your networking partners’ websites and blogs. Links to and from your site are interpreted as an indicator of trust. Essentially links from other sites are an indication that others have validated your content and view your site as relevant and trustworthy.
• Take the hot seat. Open yourself up to the advice and input of your networking team. At Next Level Executives our members engage in mastermind sessions where they tap the collective intellect of their team to tackle a particular business challenge. You can also leverage online communities, Twitter, and LinkedIn to ask and answer questions of your network. Asking for advice demonstrates you trust others.

4. Competence - Greatness attracts greatness. When I network I look for people who are not only good at what they do but for those who are… well…reaching for their next level. Your network wants to know that you are good at what you do. But how can you demonstrate your competence to large numbers of people, many of whom may not be your customers?

• Start blogging. Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting said it best when she referred to her blog as a database of her ideas and expertise. When she talks to a prospective client or networking partner she can point to her blog site as evidence of her competency. Writers are considered experts so start writing. If you are unsure where to begin, start reading and commenting on other blogs in your field or related areas. Before you know it you’ll go from joining the conversation to leading the conversation.
• Speak! I call it presentation magic. Nothing turns a person into an expert faster than a speaking engagement. When you share your expertise with a group you become more than competent, you become a thought leader. And if you do a good job of getting the word out about your speaking gig via the tools I’ve mentioned in this post you’ll find it will pay dividends far into the future.

5. Relevance - Originally the list of four fundamentals above was it. The fifth one, networking relevance, came to me in one of those in the shower “ah ha!” moments as I was going through my mental notes for this post. The truth is that even if I know you, like you, trust you and think you are amazing at what you do you still may not be a good networking fit for my team.

A guy who owns a local lawn care business is unlikely a good networking fit for a room full of Fortune 500 C Suite execs. While the lawn care business may benefit by scooping up some good clients the executives may receive little networking value in return. This works the other way as well.

So how do you assess the relevance of a networking contact?

• Similar Business Size. As the example above illustrates, business size can be a big determinate of your networking relevance. This is certainly not a hard and fast rule as there are plenty of solopreneurs whose primary target market is the Fortune 500 crowd. What you are really looking for is a mutually beneficial networking relationship. Can you help each other?
• Geography - Where do you do business? Where do you want to do business? Seek out partners who have similar target markets.
• Customers - One of the top reasons people network is to get new business. Look for networking partners who have access to your target customer base. Be sure to keep in mind however that referrals often come from places you wouldn’t naturally anticipate so don’t discount a potentially solid person just because he or she isn’t in our target demographic.

Did I Miss Anything?

I am scheduled to give the full presentation of how to integrate your offline and online networking efforts at PodCamp Boston 3 in July so I would love your feedback. Are there any other networking fundamentals that I should include? Do you have any suggestions for social media tools or offline activities that can help people maximize any of the fundamentals discussed here?

I finally picked up Seth Godin’s book “Meatball Sundae” yesterday after listening to Mitch Joel pimp it (albeit gently) on Six Pixels several times over the last few months. As of this morning I am about half-way through the book and I find myself compelled to get a conversation going on the book’s thesis.

Old Marketing (mass marketing) is dying or at least shrinking in relevance and New Marketing (permission based marketing) is the future.

The good news for business, small businesses in particular, is that new marketing is much more cost effective and has an exponentially higher response rate. One example Seth uses in the book is a comparison of response rates for direct mail versus permission based (opt in) email marketing. The typical direct mail campaign costs $1 per recipient and has an expected response rate of one percent. Compare this to a permission based email campaign where the recipients have asked to receive information about your products and services. The cost of crafting the email is most likely the same as the cost of designing the mailer in the direct mail scenario but there is virtually no cost of distribution. Sending an email to one person or one hundred thousand costs the same. Here’s the rub, according to Seth the response rate for email is often 20 to 30 times higher than snail mail.

The cost component in the above scenario, while significant, is not the point. The point is the response rate and what it means to your marketing strategy. In today’s world, people can choose to not be interrupted. Think about it:

• Radio - People have iPhones, podcasts of radio broadcasts and XM satellite radio.
• TV - TiVo, iTunes and other on-demand delivery systems make sitting through ads unnecessary.
• Telemarketing - The “do not call list” makes dinner interruptions a thing of the past.
• Spam - Unwanted email marketing (no permission given) is swept up via spam filters.

New Marketing, as Seth suggests, eschews yelling in the faces of people who would rather not hear what you have to say in favor of engaging people who have a problem you can solve. It’s the old “fish where the fish are” axiom taken to the next level.

Fish where the fish are but be sure to have the bait the fish like to eat.

My father and I took my son Jackson fishing for the first time recently. The first stop we made was the local bait shop where I asked the guy behind the counter for the best place to catch trout. Then we bought our worms and headed to the pond he suggested. We knew where the fish were.

When we got to the pond, set up and baited our hooks with several options. In addition to the worms we had brought other options such as PowerBait and salmon eggs. Sure enough the fish started biting but only the hooks baited with worms. Nothing else was drawing even the slightest nibble. But we had all that other bait. What to do?

We could have developed an aggressive marketing strategy to push the PowerBait as an attractive alternative to worms. And salmon eggs are so European and chic, they are like caviare. I mean come on, we had all that inventory. Certainly if we yelled loud enough the fish would try our other products.

But wait, there was a guy with his son fishing right near us and they were using worms. Just what the fish wanted. Hmm…maybe we should position ourselves as the best place for trout to fill their worm needs.

And this is the most important part of the “Meatball Sundae” message. New Marketing, is not about selling what you have or what you want sell to people through new marketing tools. It is about identifying what people want to buy, finding out where these people are and structuring your marketing and business strategy to maximize the engagement of these customers.

So, have you read “Meatball Sundae”? I would love to hear your thoughts.