Who is in your network of contacts?
CC Marco Bellucci
Individual relationships are an incredibly valuable asset in all stages of business development. Having said that, I also have to state that quantity doesn’t equal value in that case. But I want to make a different point now – did you check how is your network distributed, regardless of it’s size and ‘objective’ quality? Who do you actually know?
You may know influential people in the finance/banking industry, because of your job history or education. But right now you’re trying to grow a business that has products for corporate IT departments. And all of your contacts are sitting in the trading rooms or marketing divisions. Passing a message through several ‘ears’ in an organisation is usually good enough to seriously distort it, or completely loose it – before it reaches someone you should really talk to. Quite often it’s better to find another ‘lead’ into the organisation rather then try to push the message internally.
So I encourage you to do a quick check, and really evaluate your network in terms of your current goals. Be honest with yourself, don’t rate someone high just because you had (more than) a few drinks back in the days. And if you find that some important parts are missing, you can always ask your current contacts for direct introductions to highly relevant people. If not, you can go and read my post on growing your network here :)
Filed under: HowTo's | 1 Comment
Tags: Clients, communication, Networking, relationships, Sales
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