Effortless Networking: Building Your Contact List

By: Sri Dasgupta
Submitted: 2007-01-17 12:18:11
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A reader recently commented that my articles didn't "wow" her.

Well, of course not -- my intention is not to impress or dazzle people!

My goal is to provide useful information. And useful information can often be "unglamorous" because it is ... well... so utilitarian.

For instance, someone recently asked about how best to build a list of contacts for her business.

She has started a new business and attends events to build her contact list. However, she finds that most people at these events tend to stick to others they already know.

Although she's not a shy person, she found that breaking into these pre-formed groups was difficult.

My response is straight-forward:

1. Start with a clear idea of the kinds of contacts you're looking for.
2. Look for people you already know, who may be able to introduce you to such contacts -- so you don't have to attend "events".
3. If you need to (or want to) attend events to find additional contacts, go with a specific "agenda" so you can be focused and actually leverage the power of the pre-formed groups.

Here's what I mean:

Let's say you want to become a "preferred vendor" at companies or organizations, so you can provide your products or services to their employees.

You'd attend events with a specific goal of finding and compiling a list of contacts at these types of companies.

For example, if you were a coach or a massage therapist, wanting to find companies that offered coaching or massage at the workplace as employee benefits, that's what you'd look for and ask about: Are there companies that do this? If so, which ones? And what's the process to become a "preferred vendor"? And so on.

Here's where the pre-formed groups can actually be helpful to you:

If you're able to introduce yourself to the group and ask your question, you'd be able to tap into the collective knowledge and network of the entire group -- not just one person.

If the groups seem to "tight", and you're unable to (or feel too awkward to) break in, consider asking the meeting organizer or someone at the registration desk to get you started.

In most cases, this works very well, because meeting organizers want newcomers to feel welcome. After all, they want their events to be successful!

Meeting organizers will most likely introduce you to a regular attendee, who will probably know other regular attendees.

And once you meet one person in the "inner crowd", you can ask them to introduce you to others who can answer your questions and help you find what you need.

As you see, there are no bells or whistles here -- nothing to "wow" you!

However, the information is simple to understand, easy to use, and most importantly, gets you the results you want.

After all, isn't that what you really want?

(c) Copyright 2006, Srirupa Dasgupta

Sri Dasgupta helps business professionals get better results from their business networking efforts through focused and relevant conversations. She is the author of the Effortless Networking, and writes regular articles offering business networking tips and related resources.

Article source: Expert Articles