The other day, while I was describing the importance of having a large network, a client interrupted me to say that he didn’t need one, his work coming from about five people. It’s hard to argue with success, so let’s look at the difference between his view of selling professional services and mine.

Big networks tend to bifurcate into primary and secondary networks. Primary networks range between fifteen and thirty people and contain those people with whom the opportunity to give and receive is greatest.  Secondary networks encompass everyone else, with whom ties are weaker.

The theory of the strength of weak ties, first proposed by Mark Granovetter, states that opportunities come disproportionately from secondary networks.  Granovetter studied people looking for jobs through their networks.  They would start by calling on the members of their primary networks.  But as the job search ran on, the value of information from this group diminished, because the primary network members usually knew each other and had access to the same information.

In contrast, the secondary network members gathered information from their primary network members, people the job seeker didn’t know.  So, their information tended to be fresh.  Job seekers usually found jobs through this fresh well of information and introductions.  Primary network contacts helped by introducing the job seekers to their secondary network members.

We don’t want to read more into this study than it warrants. The point is this: As the term implies, referral networks are made up of people who refer their contacts to each other.  Primary contacts in such markets are extra sets of eyes and ears out looking for opportunities for you and you for them.

In contrast, my client has four or five contacts who give him lots of work. As valuable to him as they are, they do not constitute a referral network.  They hire him, rather than refer him.

So what, you might well ask.  Well, work from these sources increases or decreases in volume in ways beyond my client’s control.  One by one, they will eventually leave the market.  If my client wants to expand his business, he must go out and find additional buyers.  As his relationships are currently functioning, they won’t help him do this.  So, he will have to find them through some other means.  And that’s where he’s going to be at a disadvantage relative to someone with a big network.

The power of a network increases geometrically over time, if you maintain and grow it.  A person who has built up a network of 500 people over ten years, most of them secondary network contacts, has a much easier time generating opportunities than one who has built a network of only 20 over the same period.  (There are several reasons why this is true.  See Chapter 2 in my book, Creating Rainmakers, and Chapter 25 in Rain Making-2nd Edition for explanations.)  My client may be able to pursue his approach successfully for his career.  But I’ll put my money on the person with a large network every time.  The numbers work heavily in her favor.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 7:55 AM and is filed under Networking, Rain making. 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.