Have you been to a networking event, saw a super star executive, ran up to him to chat with him, and later go home to add he/she to LinkedIn? For me, this story is way to familiar.
Unfortunately, time after time I let the potential relationship go cold and unfortunately this is a story I have to go through over and over again, and I hate it!
We show up at networking events, meet great people, follow up poorly, and later kick ourselves when we realize we should have worked harder to create a relationship. It’s a painful situation, and here are three tips to avoid this happening to you in the future. After doing this over and over again, here are 4 ways that I stay in touch with executives
- Schedule Time For Follow-up
The networking event ends at 10PM but the ‘networking’ continues. If you want to effectively connect with future partners and customers, your responsibilities extend beyond the drive home.
If you’re like most people, you don’t have a set routine for post-event follow-up. Reaching out on LinkedIn, sending an email, and entering information into your CRM are all vital to growing your business and your network, but it’s all to easy to just ‘do it when I have a free minute’.
If you want to get the most out of your business networking events, build ‘post-event follow-up’ into your calendar either that same night after an event or the next morning.
For example, I go to the Cambridge Center of Innovation every Thursday night, and collect at least 20 or so business cards. Lately, I have made it a religious practice to come home and enter in all those individuals in my LinkedIn. Especially if it’s LinkedIn, I’ll make it a point to include a short message:
Hi Jack,
Great meeting you at the CIC last night. I can’t believe you also had a Labrador retriever growing up – they are great dogs. Let me know if I can ever be of help.
Thanks
Chirag
Co-founder, Insightfully
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