Clare Dignall - Successful Networking in 7 simple steps

If you have a choice about what goes on your business card, you can make it say a lot about you, or the nature of your business. Be creative, but remember that the business card is an important document:

Provide your contact details: Provide your name and your job title. Then provide your (or your company’s) address, telephone number, email address and web address.

Use a horizontal orientation: Using a landscape rather than a portrait orientation will ensure you will have space to enter your full contact details.

Use a standard size: The standard A8 or 74 × 52 mm is the desired size. Annoying business cards that won’t fit neatly in a standard wallet or card holder will not be filed properly by recipients and could get lost.

Left align all text for maximum readability: Centred text can look naïve and unprofessional, and it obstructs readability.

Use one font: Stick to one font (and its related italic/bold if necessary) to prevent your business card from looking disorganized.

Check and double-check: Proofread your business card thoroughly, and ask a friend to do the same, before you send it to print. One typo in your phone number can result in a very quiet business year if you don’t notice it.

Less is more: Don’t aim to provide any in-depth company or personal information. At the very most, you could include a strapline. You will be doing the talking, not the business card. Look again at the business card hereas an example.

You must put effort into planning your networking. Like any other project, you need to plan it, schedule it and monitor success. That way, you’ll spot blind alleys before time and effort is wasted, freeing you up to follow more promising leads. How you plan such a personal thing as networking is up to you. You might create a spreadsheet and enter in your goals, activities, and resulting business in it, with scheduled alerts to meet new contacts regularly. You might create a mind map connecting people and ideas in a more organic way. The choice is yours, but a few key questions will shape that plan:

What do I want to achieve for myself and my business in the long term?

Who do I want to meet to help me achieve that?

How much time/money can I spend per month?

What are my immediate networking goals at each event?

How do I measure my networking success?

Do I need different tactics for different groups?

You will have many of your own questions to add to the above, but this list may give you ideas as to how you might plan your own networking successfully.

If you are under pressure with work or the launch of your own business, you may feel that networking doesn’t feel ‘mission-critical’ enough to waste time in its planning. If that sounds like you, then three simple tools could help you manage your networking effectively:

Scheduling: Set aside a time each week or month to plan and review your networking and block this time off in your diary. That way, you won’t feel that you must ‘find’ time amongst your other commitments – you already have it set aside. Schedule these sessions for days when you know you’ll need a break from other projects; thinking about networking and the opportunities it can bring can be a good motivator if other things aren’t going your way. If it’s in your diary, you won’t be tempted to skip planning either – networking without clear goals can be haphazard and costly.

Funding: If you are starting your own business, or are networking for personal development, it’s a good idea to factor in a monthly allowance for networking. It’s positive to think of this as a necessary start-up cost, rather than an expense you can ill afford – you want to be able to catch up with contacts for coffees and lunches without feeling that you are dipping into earnings. If a once in a lifetime opportunity comes up, having some travel funds in place means you can enjoy the experience, rather than arrive stressed-out about your bank balance and resentful of the whole affair.

Measuring: Critical to your networking planning is finding a way to measure how you’re doing. Which network events result in the greatest number of active contacts? What are my monthly networking expenses against new business generated directly from it? Which contacts do I spend most time with and are we deriving mutual benefit? Does local networking yield more useful contacts than travelling to events further afield? You may ask any number of questions like this to identify how your networking is ‘delivering’, or combine them to interrogate your results effectively. Over time, you will build up a picture of the events, places and people that are most useful to you now, and others that may become more useful later. Asking questions helps you get the ‘big picture’ of the path you are taking through your networking career, and crucially, how to take charge of planning it.

There’s nothing quite like preparation to smooth your way into an event. Many of the following pointers apply to travel anywhere, but never more so than to a network event where it’s imperative you arrive looking cool, calm and collected.

It’s likely that you will attend network events in places you don’t know, and saying ‘I’m sure I will find it okay’ won’t do if you are going to avoid getting lost. On the night before, identify your route on a paper or online map and locate the nearest bus stops, stations or car parks.

If you want to ensure that you arrive promptly before cliques start to form you must research how long it’s going to take you to get there. Does the event start during the morning or evening rush hour? You’ll need to factor in extra time for travel. Is there public transport or parking nearby? Some posh events may be held in places that are ‘traffic-free’. In such cases you may have to allow time for walking to a venue – possibly with a laptop bag and in new shoes.

To save time and effort working out what you need every time you network, create a checklist (business cards, tablet, phone, charger etc.) and attach it to the inside of your bag to literally count those items in and out. Networking conversations can be scuppered before they even start if you’ve left one vital piece of cable or a charger at the office or the previous venue and you’ve no other way to show your products. Forgetting things looks horribly unprofessional and it’s stressful too – don’t put yourself through it.

Travelling from one end of the country to another to network in one day? Check what the weather will be like where you’re going and dress for that, not for where you’re leaving from. Temperatures north to south can differ wildly and you can look foolish if your clothing looks inappropriate for the weather outside. Invest in a compact brolly that can be stashed anywhere too – nothing looks worse than wet hair.

If this event is really important to you, don’t be above doing a dress rehearsal – actually wearing the clothes you plan to wear, actually carrying the laptop bag for two hours, and actually walking from your hotel to the venue to check how long it takes you in new brogues. You may only have to do this a couple of times at the start of your networking ‘career’. But it can be time very well spent.