I believe you can't do too much networking. You just never know who you will meet that needs your services.
Tonight, a colleague, friend and client called me about 4:55pm and asked me if I was going to our local Chamber's Holiday Business After Hours event fro 5-7pm. Fortunately, the event was about 5 minutes from my office, so I closed down for the day and headed over to meet him.
About halfway through the event a woman came up to me who I hadn't seen in about 5 years since I left my old position before I started my own consulting, training and coaching practice. She is now CEO of a local insurance agency with 4 locations and 35 employees. We reconnected for a few minutes, I told her what I was doing now and she told me that I should give her a call and send her my stuff.
I'm going to call her and set up an appointment for next week and see where it goes. This is the second time in 7 days that two people, whom I haven't spoken to in a long time, have invited me to meet with them to see how I can help.
This tells me I'm not doing enough marketing to my database. I do cull my database and call contacts I haven't spoken to in awhile and it always generates opportunities. Obviously, with these two contacts I made value judgements that they weren't prospects. Boy, was I wrong.
The only thing that brought me back in contact with each of them was a networking event, one directly and one indirectly.
Two lessons, 1) you can't do too much networking, and 2) you can never do enough re-connecting with the people who you know and who know you and see how you can help.
Who haven't you spoken to in a while that the holiday season would make a perfect excuse to reconnect and see where it goes? I'd challenge you to make a list of at least 12 of these contacts and commit to getting in touch within the next two weeks prior to the Christmas/New Year's Holiday week and see what happens.
Who's going to take me up on the challenge and report back to me on their results?
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