Meet your colleagues 1-2-1 and set referral goals

As I gear up my networking education goals for 2010, here is a thought I thought I quickly share with everyone:

If you think you can harvest greater results from your networking, then you need to engage your colleagues in your networking groups for a 1-2-1s with them.

Meet your colleagues at their places of work or offices, or shop-lots, showrooms, workshops, and gain a deeper understanding of their businesses and the type of customers they deal with on a day-to-day basis. Also enquire what categories of customers are the most profitable for them.

With this understanding, both you and your 1-2-1 partner needs to set goals as follows:

1. A short term referral, and this could even be yourself to engage in the service for your own needs, or a family member or a closed friend. Have a time line to achieve this, and say, do not exceed a month.

2. A long term referral, and this is a referral that you need to get to work to qualify for your colleague. This could be a former partner, former boss, or anyone you know needs the service of your colleague and that the business and revenue should be channelled to your colleagues' business. Time line to achieve this connection, is say, 2-months.

What is the recommended frequency for this levels of communication with your colleagues?

The recommended frequency for this level of communication with your colleagues is one member a week. Which means, on a weekly basis, your calendar must be filled with at least one 1-2-1 meeting appointment already penned in.

If your schedule is not filled in with this appointment, means you are not networking effectively enough.

Shall we get this done, people?