What’s Your Vector Victor?

Is your speed or direction limiting your networking? And now from our Zen networking department, pilot to passengers, “we’re making great time, but we’re hopelessly lost.” The relationship of speed and direction is such that progress is compromised when either speed or direction is zero.

Translated, this means that meeting lots of the wrong people yields a similar result to spending all of your time strategizing on how to meet the right people. Effective networking is not the art of collecting a lot of business cards. Likewise, being stuck on start and in perpetual planning mode will cause you to never get out to meet new people therefore arbitrarily constraining your network value.

The sum of speed and direction is your progress toward a goal, yet they are independent variables. Optimal progress is delivery through the proper balance of these variables.

Networking Best Practice - do this plan for 30 days:

• Identify who you want to meet by name or discipline at the meetings that you are scheduled to attend
• Connect to at least 3 of those target people (potential centers of influence) at each meeting
• Schedule a one-on-one meeting with the 3 target people at their place of business within the next 30-days to learn more about them
• Only go to the number of events that will allow you to sustain having 3 post event meetings with the key people who you are connecting to

A little planning and preparation coupled with strong urgency to meet with and learn from your centers of influence will propel you to remarkable new levels of networking success. Let us know how you do...