What is the point of Networking?

People are making me nuts! I work around them, train around them and watch... and I keep asking.. what is the point? I am involved in several networking groups, many social groups for businesses and professionals and whenever there is a networking event I keep looking at the people 'working the room' and just want to cry out, WHY ARE YOU HERE?

So now I will ask you. Do you belong to a networking group? How many members in that group? Do you know them? Are you loyal to them? Have you personally used their services or sat down in a one-to-one with them so you at least get to know them?

And if you are with a networking group and loyal to them why do you go to that networking group?

When I ask that of most members, the first thought is to 'get more business'. 

Holy Cow Batman! KERPOW!!!

No. That should not be the reason you are going. Your reason for going should be to learn from other members. What works for them and what doesn't. What makes them successful or why are they not? Your personal growth should be why you network.

Have you ever heard of Zig Ziglar? And his saying was, if you will first help enough other people get what they want you will get what you want, or something to that affect.

So you should be going to learn about them so you can become one of their supporters and help them promote their business. If you will do that and everyone is doing the same you will have eighteen to forty unpaid professional sales people working on your behalf from now on. Would that make you happy?

Now let's get back to when you go to a networking event, cocktail party, meet up, seminar... what is your purpose in attending?

I ask this because it seems to me that most of the people I meet are there to give out their business card. If you are networking correctly you should only be able to meet and learn from six to eight people in a two hour event. If you are coming home with fifteen to thirty business cards or gave out more then fifteen then you did it wrong.

The purpose of networking is to locate and learn about two to four solid contacts that you will reconnect with after the event. 

What? No! YES!!!

What if at each social event you attended you gained TWO rock solid prospects. What if you connected with four and only two of them become your clients? How many events are you attending? Two each month? Four? 

Now imagine that you attend two each month, make four very good connections and could close, in some fashion, half of those. That means you would be adding four new customers, clients, something every month. Now I don't know about you but if I would go back to anybody's boss and say, 'hey boss, I closed 48 brand new clients this year' in addition to the clients that were already using our product/service and that is in addition to your usual contacting, calling or selling that you do every day. I can imagine your boss would be pretty happy.

I won't even go into what you should be asking, how you should connect, how you get them to tell you all your need to know in the first two minutes so you don't get tied down in a "conversation" and how you make sure they want to hear form you as soon as possible and might actually call you first.

So the next time you go out 'networking' remember WHAT IS THE POINT of you being there.

I'm Steve Sapato Professional Networking and Business Coach at www.mentalprosperityblog.com