Keith Ferrazzi - Never Eat Alone

"The response to my Monday-night For Women Only dinner was really overwhelming," she continued. "I always used my finest china and crystal and silver candlesticks. In other words, I treated these occasions the way most hostesses treat conventional male/

female dinner parties.

"Our dinner-table conversations are unusually candid. We talk—or argue—about U.S. foreign policy or discuss problems common to women in management positions, such as how to combat stereotypes or sexism in the workplace.

"We get a lot of feedback from each other and, because of our experience, can suggest various people to see, organizations to contact, or strategies to develop. Because they are so supportive, these dinners have become very important to many of us."

Huston's weekly parties became an institution in the Washington, D.C., area where she lived. It brought like-minded women together who bonded and supported one another through the similar trials and tribulations each was going through. There's no reason you can't do the same thing. Creating a theme around a point of commonality—be it race, religion, gender, occupation, or anything else—can infuse your get-togethers with added purpose, and help you attract others.

2. Use invitations.

While I'm all for slapdash impromptu parties, the dinner parties that will be most successful will be those you've devoted some time and energy to. Whether by phone, e-mail, or handwritten note, be sure to get your invites out early—at least a month in advance—so people can have a chance to plan accordingly—and so you'll know who is and who is not coming.

3. Don't be a kitchen slave.

There's no sense in a party being all work. If you can't hire a caterer, either cook all the food ahead of time or just use takeout. If the food is good and the presentation snazzy, your guests will be impressed.

These days, I usually opt for a caterer. But you can have a simlarly elegant party for much less if you're willing to get creative and spend some time preparing. The key to low-budget dinner parties is to keep it simple. Make one large dish, like a stew or chili that can be prepared a day or two ahead of time. Serve it with great bread and salad. That's all you need.

Well, maybe not ALL you need. My other expense is alcohol. I love—love!—great wine. I always go a little overboard with the vino. And really, could God have blessed us with a better social lubricant? It amounts to the finest party favor ever created. But again, everyone has their own predilections, and I'm sure you can pull off a perfectly fabulous dinner party with just soda.

4. Create atmosphere.

Make sure to spend an hour or two gussying up your place. Nothing expensive or out of the ordinary, mind you. Candles, flowers, dim lighting, and music set a good mood. Add a nice centerpiece to the dinner table. Get a young family member to walk around serving drinks if you don't have a bartender or waiter. The point is to give your guests all the signals they need to understand that it's time to enjoy.

5. Forget being formal.

Most dinner parties don't call for anything fancy. Follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Silly). Good food. Good people. Lots of wine. Good conversation. That's a successful dinner party. I always underdress just so no one else feels they did. Jeans and a jacket are my standard fare, but you judge for yourself.

6. Don't seat couples together.

The essence of a good dinner party lies in seating everyone properly. If you seat couples together, things can get boring. Mix and match, putting people together who don't know each other but perhaps share an interest of some kind. I like to set placeholders where I want people to sit. Each placeholder is a simple card with the guest's name on it. If I have the time, I love to put an interesting question or joke on the back of the card that guests can use to break the ice with one another. Or you can go out and buy funny greeting cards just to make things interesting.

7. Relax.

Guests take their cues from the host—if you're having fun, odds are that they will, too. The night of the party, your job is to enjoy all the fruits of your labor. That's an order.

I remember when being a marketer was simpler. Essentially, marketers were expected to create an ad, get it to the consumer through one of the few available media sources, and then sit back and wait.

Those days are good and gone. The way the world speaks and listens has changed radically. And the tools we use to communicate are changing at a similar pace. As access to consumers grows, so does consumer power. They can choose from hordes of entertainment venues, use software tools to filter out unwanted messages, and shoot down surviving messages with a heightened sense of cynicism. It's just not as easy to be heard. Brand loyalty is tougher to achieve. Conventional advertising and marketing just won't cut it—and neither will traditional thinking among those who want to get their message across. The CMO of today and tomorrow must be a strategist, a technologist, creative, and always focused on the sales and financial return on his marketing investments. Not a lot of individuals, consulting firms, or agencies combine all those traits. As a result, the life of the CMO is a lonely one, and the life of the CEO who expects all this is too often a frustrated one.

My growing sense of these changes, along with conversations with respected marketers, is the main reason I founded FerrazziGreenlight, to focus on marketing strategies and programs that push the marketing spend closer to actual sales. To count less on big broadcast advertising and more on building personalized loyalty between clients and their customers. That might mean creating a loyalty program for a retailer similar to what we operated at Starwood Hotels. Or designing an infomercial for a complex new product launch. Or facilitating an "ambassador's program" for a large engineering firm that targeted just 500 customers, prospects, and infiuencers in the United States.

I hope it's not a surprise that I see effective marketing as just building relationships with customers and prospective customers.

Let me translate this macro trend to a very personal scene that repeats itself over and over again when I give lectures at colleges. It will take place just before or after I've given my talk. A student will muster the nerve to approach me, and admiring as I am of such initiative, I'll be very receptive. Then, remarkably, nothing will be said beyond, "Hi, I'm so-and-so and your talk was great." Perhaps I'll ask what they got out of it or how they see what I talked about playing out around them in the world. Too often, my attempts are met with comments like "Oh, I don't know," or "I just think what you said was great. I'm not sure I could ever do all t h a t . . . "

Oh, wow, I'd think, it was fantastic talking with you, but I've got some bathroom tiles that need cleaning. Not to be too rough here, but how can you talk to someone when they have nothing to say? How can you offer your company or your network anything of value if you have not thought about how you want to stand out and differentiate yourself in building that relationship?

Marketers and networkers alike take heed: Be interesting! All that you've read thus far doesn't relieve you of the responsibility of being someone worth talking to, and even better, worth talking about. Virtually everyone new you meet in a situation is asking themselves a variation on one question: "Would I want to spend an hour eating lunch with this person?"

Consultants call it the airport question. In the lengthy interview process that that industry has become famous for—a peppering of complicated case studies and logic-testing puzzles—the one question consultants use to choose one person over a pool of equally talented candidates is the one question they ask only of themselves: "If I were trapped in John F. Kennedy Airport for a few hours [and all travel-weary consultants inevitably spend too much time in airports], would I want to spend it with this person?"