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Business Networking - Old vs New Paradigm

Guest post by: Edward Abel

Article Overview: The old paradigm of networking is to show up at a community mixer or professional meeting with your business cards, shake some hands, aggressively pass out your business cards to everyone in sight, collect business cards along the way, and pontificate about your wonderful products or services. The goal of the old paradigm was to get in front of as many people as possible because, eventually, someone would realize that they need your product or service.

Business Networking - Old vs New Paradigm

The old paradigm of networking is to show up at a community mixer or professional meeting with your business cards, shake some hands, aggressively pass out your business cards to everyone in sight, collect business cards along the way, and pontificate about your wonderful products or services. The goal of the old paradigm was to get in front of as many people as possible because, eventually, someone would realize that they need your product or service. One of the troubles with this old paradigm is that no one really gets to know you (or care about you) and you don't really get to know anyone else either. You handout and collect business cards, but you don't have a proper follow-up system to stay engaged with all of the people you've met. So, you drop the business cards you collected into your desk drawer to gather dust for the next two years. In the meantime, your phone isn't ringing with curious prospects and you're doing nothing more to build a relationship with the people you met.

Eventually, you stop going to networking events because they feel like a waste of time.

The new paradigm of networking involves building quality relationships one person at a time. Quality trumps quantity in the new paradigm. It's about building as many relationships as you can and ensuring that they are built on quality. Having many low-quality relationships is not as valuable as having fewer high-quality ones.

The primary payoff of effective networking is better relationships, which will lead to more clients, more revenue, and greater net worth. If your network is filled with contacts and allies that are interested in your success, and they are willing to refer potential clients to you (because they know you, trust you, and like you), then you have a high net-worth network (your network is your "net-worth"). The only way to build that kind of net-worth is by following the new paradigm of networking.

Where will you be networking this week/month/year?

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Article Tags: As with any profession, emailing an employee or phoning a vendor



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My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
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Re: Make Friends...Literally BUILD them! - [quote="burnsrunner":1zobscwk]I agree! Networking is definitely the key word here. What does everyone feel about the different Networking platforms out there? Twitter Facebook LinkedIn what are some others?[/quote:1zobscwk] I am on Twitter and Linkedin, have not joined Facebook yet as my time is fairly limited and one needs a lot of time to devote to all these various networking platforms. Unless you do this full time (the networking I mean). MichelleJ


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