Effortless Networking

Have you ever wondered about how to keep in touch with everyone you meet, both efficiently and effectively? (Yes, it’s a common question!)

Before I answer the question, let me ask you a couple of questions first:

• How do you decide with whom to keep in touch?
• Why do you want to keep in touch with these people?

As I’ve mentioned before, the power of networking lies in building strong working relationships with a manageable number of people, and then leveraging their collective networks, expertise and knowledge.

So how you choose these people is very important. And it’s equally important to be clear about why you want to keep in touch with these people, because it affects how often you connect with each other, and what you talk about when you do.

When you’re out *prospecting*, however, it’s a different story.

In this case, you probably do want to keep in touch with every lead, or prospective client or customer you meet. However, you still need to be clear about the kind of conversation you want to have with these people when you do get in touch.

In either case, how do you keep in touch with all these people without exhausting yourself? And is there a manageable way to nurture your numerous prospects until they’re ready to do business with you?

Well, let me share with you one software tool that has helped me tremendously in automating and streamlining how I keep in touch with my leads and prospects. And as you read my prospecting “case study”, consider how you might apply the same concepts to networking.

The software tool I use is called AWeber Communications.

And here is one way I use it:

When I collect leads at a trade show, I enter them all in the AWeber system, specifically into my “trade show leads” list. For this particular list, I have an automated follow-up message setup, that thanks the recipient for stopping by my booth and expressing interest in what I offered at the show. I end by asking them to do something specific (i.e. a call to action).

As soon as I enter a lead into the system, that person gets a *personalized* follow up email from me.

After that, I keep in touch with everyone on this list by sending follow up email messages on a regular basis (so they remember our initial interaction at the trade show). Usually, these messages have something of interest or relevance to this group of people — such as, an announcement about an upcoming workshop, or a link to an article on a topic of interest, and so on.

Here’s how I save time and energy:

1. The system allows me to create as many lists I want. So I create different lists for different groups of people: trade show booth visitors, people I meet at conferences, attendees at my speaking engagements, etc.

   This allows me to communicate with each group in a very specific way. Sometimes I send the same email to more than one list, if that message is of relevance or interest to more than one group.

   That’s why knowing *why* you want to keep in touch with someone is important. Because what you talk to them about will be different.

   So let me interject a question here: what kind of messages would you send to your *network*, if you were using this tool to keep in touch them?

2. The system allows me to personalize each message, so I have to write any email just once, and use the tool to indicate how I want that message personalized.

   Then I let the software broadcast that single message to hundreds of people, customizing it for each recipient.

   (By the way, would such a feature be useful to keep in touch with your network? Why or why not?)

3. The system also allows me to setup “rules”. So I have setup a rule that automatically removes a person from the prospects list and adds him or her to the clients list, once that person converts.

   And recipients can remove themselves from my mailing lists at any time (without any intervention from me) if they no longer want to get emails from me.

   All this means that there is practically no manual maintenance on my part, which I absolutely love!

Since the system is so flexible, I actually use it in many other ways.

For instance, my 90-day eCourse on improving your productivity and professional effectiveness uses AWeber to distribute the appropriate “lesson” to the right person each week. I use this tool to keep in touch with you! The possibilities seem endless — I keep finding new ways to use this product to save time.

Well, back to keeping in touch with your network:

• When you do get in touch with people in your network, what do you talk about?
• What is your objective for the conversation?

Of course every person is different, every relationship is different, and by no means is email the best or the most appropriate medium for all cases.

Still, is there a common theme or pattern that you see, when it comes to keeping in touch with your network? Is there some component of “staying connected” that can be automated? If so, what might that be?

Have I given you food for thought? I certainly hope so!

For more information on AWeber and other tools, click here.

Till next week,
– Sri

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2005 at 8:00 am and is filed under Improving Effectiveness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.