6 Tips to Make Networking Your Superpower

Super connector Mary Kopczynski shares her best practices to making meaningful and lasting connections.

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

I always thought it was weird that I was naturally curious about almost every person I’ve met, but after 15 years of doing it professionally with two companies under my belt, I recognize it as skill developed from years of practice. Here is my personal approach to networking, which I define as the process of turning a relationship with a virtual stranger into a strategic partnership over time.

1. Develop a good networking “hygiene” that will work in the long run. I keep notes on my 15,000+ connections so I remember people — who introduced me, when I met them and what they were looking for. It comes in handy a decade later when you see they have risen in their career and now have the authority to make things happen for you. I’ve tried a lot of different sales-style solutions over the years: Salesforce, Outlook, Trello, CardMunch, LinkedIn, etc. They come and go. Whatever it is you do, stick with it. I found out that an old-fashioned notebook with a pen and paper has been my go-to tool, followed up with a combination of Excel, LinkedIn and Salesforce.
2. Follow up is key. Most people think networking is the ability to work a room, which is a great start, but the real work of networking is the follow up AFTER the room. I can walk away from a conference with 100+ business cards, but in reality, very few people actually follow up afterwards. So when you take that step to reach out after an event, you have already made yourself stand out. And no, asking them to be a LinkedIn connection does not count.
3. Quality over quantity. Because following up is the most important part, your goal at a networking event is to find ONE quality person. Just one. And it’s not about who people are or where they work at that given moment, but who they know and who they will become. Author Judy Robinett suggests in her book “How to be a Power Connector,” you only need to invest in about 50 core people at a time to accomplish what you need in business. (Note bene: yours truly was cited as a super connector in her book!)
4. Ask for what you want and be open to what you get. Research shows that it is the more tangential relationships that will make the most useful introductions. So don’t be upset if your closest friends and colleagues are not willing to go to bat for you. However, the most shocking, high level connections I have ever made have been people I previously underestimated, including my immediate family members.
5. Create relevance and make it personal. You would be impressed by who will actually talk to you with very little introduction so long as you create the right relevance. There are many “bots” out there that shoot for generic intros, but if you’re focused on quality, you find a way to add that one sentence about why them, why you, and why now. Then don’t worry. If you email 100 people and only 1 writes back, focus on the positive: that is 1 new person in your network that you wouldn’t have had without those efforts!
6. Stay in touch. The key to leveraging your network is to stay in touch with those people. Send word on your progress or advances in your particular project or career so you can reach out to them again later. You can do this through mass updates via LinkedIn or Facebook, but nothing replaces a funny text mentioning an inside joke.

Like I said, this is my personal approach — there is no right way or wrong way. I’d love to hear in the comments what tips work for you!

Most people do not think of banking regulation as “fun,” but the bright green walls covered with hand drawn cartoons about FATCA and CCAR indicate that RegAlytics and its maverick leader, Mary Kopczynski, is ushering in something the world has never seen before. She is relentless in her mission to make regulation easier and while she certainly raises eyebrows, most people get drawn into her vision of a future world of Regulatory Data-as-a-Service, smartregs, and automated compliance. She recently shared this vision at Springboard’s 2019 Tech Innovation Hub. She is the co-founder and CEO of 8of9 (a regulatory crisis management firm) and earned both her J.D. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University.