Networking takes time, and for professionals, time is scarce.   Lack of time can force us to pass up an opportunity to help a network contact.  Because help is the coin of networkland, these missed opportunities lessen our value as networkers.  Miss one such chance and no great harm will be done. Miss again and again and the cumulative harm will be substantial.

Here are three things to have ready to give, so that you don’t have to take time to get them each time you want to give them to a contact.

1. The Key Resource

Clients often ask their professional advisors for referrals to other providers. If a specific kind of provider is requested frequently, it pays to vet a few of them, so that you can quickly and comfortably refer them in the future.  Whether or not these providers can also refer clients to you is of secondary importance. 

A management coach, a PhD psychologist, frequently gets requests for referral to counselors who can help a client’s family member or friend with personal problems.   She has verified two or three psychologists who do that kind of work and to whom she can refer these clients. 

Clients sometimes ask a structural engineer for advice on problems in residential buildings, not his specialty.  He developed a list of engineers who did do residential work whom he could refer.

Note in both these cases, the need for help is probably urgent.  When the need is urgent, the value of the referral is high.  You don’t want to come up empty handed when the contact turns to you at so critical a moment.

2. Note Cards

When a client is ill or has a death in the family, you may want to send a sympathy card and feel an electronic one too impersonal.  When a client has a birthday, gets promoted, or has a new child, you may think of sending a card of congratulations.  You have every intention of buying a card, but don’t get around to it and the moment passes. 

This may seem a small thing; but it’s not.  We all appreciate it when a friend recognizes our successes and our tragedies.  Doing so with a card takes little effort and is good manners, whether or not the person is a network contact.  With network contacts it helps advance a relationship. 
But, we seldom go out and buy the needed card, we are so busy and distracted.  You are far more likely to write a personal note, if you have the card in your desk in anticipation of needing it. 

The next time you visit an art museum or high-end stationer, buy some all-purpose, conservative cards and keep them in your desk.  Having them at hand allows you to draft a quick note immediately on hearing news from a contact that warrants so personal a response.

3. The Special Book

Books make excellent gifts, because they have low cash value, but high intrinsic value to the right reader.  If you find yourself recommending a book often, buy a few copies so that you have them ready to send as gifts.  Some of the books I do this with include:

1. The New Strategic Selling by Heiman and Sanchez.  This guide to planning and monitoring a complex sale is best-in-class and an important resource for professionals and others who sell.
2. Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman.  The author helps people overcome thinking habits that get in the way of their success.
3. A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons by Robert M. Sapolsky. I give this book to those who have suffered and enjoyed the difficulty of cross-cultural communication.  It makes them laugh and so is among the kindest gifts a person can make.
4. My current favorite business book. When I read a book that I think has an important message, I will send them to contacts I think will appreciate them.  For example, I have done this with:
   o  The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
   o  The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner et. Al.
   o  Strategy and the Fat Smoker by David Maister, which I reviewed here.

(I would be interested in hearing what books you give or recommend to your contacts.)

A little foresight will make you a better networker, because you will be able to give more and in networking, you have to give to get.
 

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 8:43 am and is filed under Rain making, Business Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.