How Long Does It Take for Networking to Payoff?

This question gets asked frequently and the normal answer of course is, that depends. There are no shortcuts. An old sales boss of mine used to say, “your raise becomes effective when you are.”

There are two base variables when assessing effective activity; quantity and quality. How much activity are we doing and what the quality of that activity is. The simplified rule is - we get what we do.

S = Q x A

Success = Quality of Activity x Quantity of Activity.

Like all similar formulas, when either variable is a low number or zero then success is low or non-existent.

Michael Jordan scored a lot of points because he took a lot of shots. In his words, “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

When we’re new or short of our goals the most important variable is quantity. The quality of our activity generally improves as our experience and volume increases. Increasing the quantity of our activity is a conscious choice. Example: I will increase my sales appointments per week from 5 to 10, I will exercise for 60 minutes each day instead of 30 minutes, I will have at least 2 one-on-one networking meetings each week instead of 1 meeting, etc... The practice and reinforcement that we get from more activity naturally increases the quality of our activity both because we are getting more practice and because more volume helps us make better choices.

If you want to get more, you have to do more.