Business networking is an invaluable tool to improve your leverage and to find openings to fully use all your talents. However, business networking has been traditionally portrayed as a difficult task. It is, if you follow the general advice - but it does not have to be so! You are more connected than you realize - take full advantage of those connections!

Power of Business Networking

Business Networking has been the name of the game for years - "It is not what you know, but who you know" - so goes the popular saying. And it is true, for one simple reason - leverage. A lever can be used to lift objects that you cannot even budge otherwise! Leverage, similarly, gives you the ability to accomplish tasks and reach positions that you simply could not achieve on your own. And networking offers the best leverage that is available to you in both your personal and professional life. Not applying networking to your life would seriously limit your ability to fully exploit your talents and will severely limit you in the kind of change you can bring about in the world.  |image2|

But business networking can be hard - especially if you follow the traditional methodologies frequently advocated in books and shown in films. This is the type of networking that most often happens through parties, golf games, conferences and contrived get-togethers. But while these avenues are indeed places where some networking may occur, your most useful form of networking happens at a far simpler place - that is, wherever you happen to be!

Simplicity of Networking

The best form of business networking, the one that yields the most useful results, is through people who know you well. They can recommend you to new positions, offer concrete suggestions, provide feedback and so forth with complete confidence, knowing who you really are. Who are these people?

• Colleagues with whom you work every day
• Colleagues across departments or companies with whom you collaborate on projects
• Your friends with whom you meet regularly
• Acquaintances whom you may meet occasionally, but you now know you well
• Any forums you may be a part of (Poetry, Literature and so on)
• Members of groups you may be a part of (Painting, Drama, Animal Rights)
• Your long term acquaintances at some local businesses
• If you are active in online forums and have established a name for yourself, you may find willing and eager partners who would love to work and share with you
• Your friends from high-school
• Your friends from college
• Your extended family

You get the picture! You already know a lot of people! And they are part of your inner network, the one that will benefit you the most for they know you the best.

Far too often, we are focused on areas far out of our immediate network, and struggle too hard to bring them into our inner network. Such efforts seldom succeed, for they reek of overefforting from the get go, and both parties sense it immediately. Trust takes time and there is simply no way around it.

Maintaining your Network

Putting efforts on maintaining the network of people you already have is where the real effort is to be expended. It is extremely simple to finish a given project and move on and not keep in touch or maintain a network of the individuals you had worked with in those projects. Especially as the years pass, and the number of new projects and people you have worked with increases, there is a tendency amongst us to let the contacts wither. And then we say "O'boy, I wish I had a network!".

A few simple steps will help us maintain this most useful of lists:

• Always maintain a portfolio of your projects at work, and under each portfolio, write the names and contact information of the individuals you worked with.
• Cross reference that into your Address book
• Anytime you get information that updates the contact information about the individuals, promptly update that in your Address book
• For each individual in your Address book, cross reference to a separate area where you record their area of work or interest.
  
  Like the old style Rolodex, you will now be keeping details of the individual, but additionally cross-referenced to where you have worked or dealt with them.
• On an annual basis, send out either New Year's or Christmas cards sincerely wishing them well, and giving a very brief update on your personal situation.
• Maintain a similar list of your friends and other acquaintances, though your contact with them may happen on a more personal footing.

Even if you succeed in maintaining contact with 50% of all the folks you actually know, your network will be an extremely strong, widespread and profitable one. And you will be able to help many in your network as well whenever you are in an advantageous position, touching their lives positively as well.

Your network is huge! Start keeping up with it!