GROWING
The Secret to Strategic Networking How will your business grow? It’s all in who you know. BY JACK KILLION
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here are many approaches to driving profitable growth: hire more salespeople, increase your marketing budget, or invest in developing new products and services. These are all legitimate business development options, of course, but there’s another one that’s often overlooked. That strategy is person-to-person networking, and it allows C-level executives to leverage scarce resources to spur growth. This is not the sporadic swapping of business cards or meet-and-greets that we sometimes consider networking. Rather, this is business development networking, and it’s about establishing substantial, well-targeted relationships tied to specific growth goals. Targeted networking is a three-step process:
Identify one or more specific growth goals.
For each goal, identify the people or types of people you need to reach.
Look through your “connections clusters,” identifying those who can get you to the people you need to reach.
Few people realize the range of connections in their various clusters of friends, family, and acquaintances, including business associates and customers, alumni groups, charities,
community members and civic organizations. Most people estimate they have a few hundred connections when actually they have thousands. It is highly likely that someone you know can connect you to just the person you need.
HOW IT WORKS: Some years ago, I took over a failing industrial manufacturing company. I decided we had to penetrate new international markets, starting in Latin America. I wanted to talk with someone in the U.S. Department of Commerce to learn about resources available to a company like mine. I discovered that a friend’s father worked for the Department of Energy, and I asked if he could connect me with an appropriate person. In a few weeks, he got back to me with a name, indicating the person was expecting my call. A couple of phone conversations led me to access the network of United States commercial attaché officers throughout Latin America. Each was happy to help us market, organize, and host one-day events at the embassies for targeted industry leaders in their country. In one week we met with hundreds of potential new customers this way. That one referral from a friend’s father led to introductions to resources I hadn’t known about, which led to millions of dollars of equipment and service sales in Latin America. These relationships continued for years. A friend of mine, the head of his own New York–based wealth management
firm, targeted Hilton Head, South Carolina, for new clients. He identified and reached out to possible strategic partners there—banks, accountants, and attorneys. The head of a leading accounting practice agreed to host a presentation by the wealth manager. That generated new wealth management clients who remain strong advocates years later. Another friend, a VC firm partner, wanted to develop a deal flow, and identified possible deal sources. A marketing professor and Harvard Business Review editor was on his hit list, and he was able to connect to him via a friend who knew the professor from Harvard Business School. The professor responded well to being asked to help steer viable earlystage deals to my friend. The two found many new ventures to tackle together in the following years. You can easily apply the same approach to driving the growth of your business. Identify very clear growth goals. For each, identify specific people and organizations that can help you accomplish your goal. Look through your connections clusters. Reach out to contacts to get you to people or organizations you need. The process works. Try it. Jack Killion is a serial entrepreneur and the cofounder of Bluestone+Killion—Harnessing the Power of Networking.
Fall 2014
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