It’s that time of year again! Everyone is making resolutions to improve their lives for the year ahead.
Go to the gym more, spend more time with friends, eat less junk food, drink less alcohol: it always seems to be about doing more, or doing less!
Well, if your professional resolution for 2020 is to ‘do more networking’, more might not be the answer…
Going to more networking events can take up a heck of a lot of time. If you wanted to, you could easily go to two or three a day in the same city (I used to go to around five back in the day!). But the time and cost implications for this volume of networking can be huge – not to mention the drain on your energy, and taking you away from all other aspects of running your business.
It’s time to start thinking about ‘working smarter not harder’ when it comes to your networking activities; what if you could attend fewer events with higher returns? Surely that’s worthy of a New Years resolution!
The way forward is to be more strategic with the events you choose to attend. Looking at your objectives and what you want to gain from going networking (could be sales, suppliers, specific relationships, the list goes on). Then analysing the events happening within your target geographic areas (there’s no point networking in Leeds if you want to sell your products in Newcastle). Add in your target market and you’ll be able to narrow down the available events to applicable ones that compliment your overall objectives. Simple!
It will be way more valuable to you and your business if you attend one or two events a week that are filled with the people you want to meet, rather than attending two events a day filled with people you don’t necessarily need to meet based on your objectives.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a massive advocate for the fact that there’s no such thing as wasted networking: everyone you meet can add value in their own way. But when you have a million other things to do being strategic and streamline with your time delegation, especially when networking with objectives, less is definitely more!
If you’d like support creating your own bespoke networking strategy I’d love to help! Simply connect and say ‘hello’ HERE
Or to learn how to create your own unique networking strategy, sign up to our new ‘How To Network Strategically: create a networking strategy!’ online course!
Or even better, become a NetKnoWho member and we’ll create a networking strategy for you!
