How often do you really fax people? Mail them things? It is important to collect only what you need to get to your goal. By narrowing what you track, you will make it easier to focus on your network, rather than on data management.

Knowing and controlling your message is very important. People you reach out to have a limited amount of time and if you can’t be explicit how they can help you, they won’t be able to help, even if they want to.

Make sure you are talking with people who can help you. Prioritizing the value of contacts will allow you to easily determine the method and frequency of follow-up for each contact. Classifying contacts by industry and function will help you focus your networking.

Always be looking for opportunities to follow-up with your contacts. By categorizing your contacts, you can easily find groups of contacts with whom to share interesting articles or reach out to when you are visiting their city. How you initiate contact is as important as doing so in the first place. I try to always call someone rather than send an email but, if you have to email, remember:

• Concise, to-the-point emails are crucial as people don’t read long emails.
• Emails with questions that can be easily answered help promote dialog.
• Even if you send out a mass email, every contact should be personalized.

After every interaction with a contact, it is important to track the next date you want to reach out to them. Tracking these dates and running regular reports on who you are overdue to contact will help provide you the discipline to initiate contact.

Having detailed information about each contact at your fingertips when someone calls you or you call them helps demonstrate how important they are to you. I also track opportunities a contact has referred me to. This way I can thank them for past referrals and remind them of referrals they had offered to make.

When you start a conversation with a contact, it is important to listen to them and understand how you can help them. I work hard to introduce contacts to each other. With your contacts in CRM, it is easy to search your network for key terms, people, etc… and make introductions.

It is important to get to know contacts personally. In addition to developing new friendships, developing personal relationships also helps contacts remember you when an opportunity presents itself. Conversations are more compelling and memorable when you have a common bond. Two ways I nurture relationships include:

• I track interesting details about people to allow me to start conversations with something interesting to my contact. My personal favorite is the gentleman who I call every year after the Auburn – Alabama game.
• If I have an interesting conversation about a topic, I will often follow-up by sending a book or article to a contact.

You will need to make a commitment to use your new networking system and keep it updated. I suggest tightly limiting the number of fields you track for a contact to make it easy to update after each call/meeting. Once it becomes a part of your process, you can quickly note when you need to contact someone and when someone calls you, you can easily pull up your past conversations. And, having reports you use regularly to guide your networking is also important.