Joining the Dots — Networking for Dummies

Steve Walker
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

Networking has become a mainstay for anyone doing business these days. There is LinkedIn, Facebook, Meetup groups, Telegram, WhatsApp, conferences, and many many more, all being used to network to various communities of common interest. However, what do you do with the connections you make?

Many people with whom I have spoken have been particularly self-interested when leveraging their extended network. They reach out to engage and effectively “sell” themselves and their product or service to their contact. From my anecdotal observations the return on investment from this type of prospecting is quite low despite occasional successes. Further, this is more a one-off sales approach rather than being a sustainable engagement model delivering ongoing returns.

I would like to propose an alternative approach whereby you share and contribute before you look to reap rewards, if at all proactively on this last point. We all know that there needs to be a degree of contribution and benevolence where social media networking is concerned. You are almost expected to regularly create or curate content, provide meaningful discourse, and hopefully raise the level of awareness of your extended network family. Whilst I subscribe to this ethos, I also go some steps further by actively seeking to connect members of my network to each other for their mutual benefit.

Please understand that this latter activity is not necessarily for me to be a broker middleman taking my share of any subsequent rewards. It is more in the manner of creating a bank of gratitude which may be returned in kind in future but is by no means expected. In my case, it has been returned many times over and for that I am truly grateful to my network of friends and associates. So how do I execute my benevolence approach? It’s all about being able to join the dots.

The foremost requirement is that you get to know your network. Given the large numbers of people who may be in your network this may not be an easy task. I would suggest therefore that you look at the “closest” connections by grouping them in various categories. One of those is clearly geography, where you can cross-promote and assist your more local contacts by being able to easily liaise and meet. That would also then apply to the local contacts you introduce to them.

Other categories include industry sectors eg IT startups, FinTech, Healthcare; application solutions eg CRM, Data Analytics, AI; roles eg salespeople, data scientists, financiers; or perhaps specialist skills eg cryptocurrency and blockchain. Not only will you need to know what these contacts do, but you should also have a deeper understanding of what makes them different, and how they might be of value to your other contacts. Then it’s a matter of having your radar up.

They say that the definition of luck is where preparation meets opportunity. Having your radar up means having the ability to spot an opportunity, and your preparation in knowing your network provides a fit for that opportunity. A recent and very real example for me was in healthcare. I was introduced to some entrepreneurs who were in the early stages of building a healthcare platform addressing a problematic and costly area, using Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. While they had commenced the basic development, the extended AI platform would have been some years away from being fully developed as a mature solution.

However, given my knowledge of an existing and differentiated AI platform that one of my connections had developed, I was able to introduce the healthcare project founders to my connection. The result is that the healthcare project time to MVP would be greatly accelerated under a better return on investment. For my AI solution connection, he has acquired a new customer in a rapidly growing sector, with almost no cost of sale.

This example is one of many I could quote over the years since I first joined LinkedIn (my prime networking platform) back in 2004. So, the lessons here are a) know your network as intimately as you can practically, b) keep your radar up on where you may be able to promote your connections, and c) be benevolent and grateful with no expectations!

Steve Walker

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Geospatial data analytics and AI Advocate / Strategist / FinTech / HealthTech / Supporter — Indigenous Opportunity / Food and Wine Critic (Not professionally)