Everybody who is serious about networking follows up right? wrong! the percentages tell me otherwise. In my own research I can reveal that around 8% of people follow up meeting people with an email and less than 1% do it well.
If you have not been called by someone within a few days after meeting them at a networking event what makes you think they want a repeat of everything you told them on an email? Here are a few tips to make your follow up more effective:
Try to personalise
A ‘to all’ email is acceptable especially if you have quite a few cards from the event, but make sure you BCC the email addresses, no-one will appreciate your inviting people to spam them,
Separate your cards into the people you had a good chat with, and the rest you whom you are not sure about. Write personally to the people you had a good chat to, and write one email to everyone else.
Help don’t sell
Give an extremely brief reminder, I always write ‘I was the guy that did online marketing’ that’s it as far as I am concerned, and then try to think of someone they where looking for, what? You did ask them whom or what they are looking for at the event? No? oh go back to Go and do not collect £200!
Effective networking
The people that get maximum results from networking go to help others find what they were looking for.
Grow your Database
People ask me over the years how I have nearly 2000 professional Linkedin contacts, and I do not accept just anyone! For the past 7 years whenever I have been networking, call it tenacity or call it being single, I write down the email addresses separated by a comma, and then go to contacts > add contacts in Linkedin, there you will see a box to put all those emails in, and click send. What? You did tell them you would send the contact an invite to Linkedin at the event? No? Oh you are not to good at this are you!?
In the email you send to them you also remind them you have sent them an invite to Linkedin, this helps them to look for your invite, it may, as I have seen in many cases, be sent to a not so frequently visited email account.
Tips
Like blogging the secret is not about selling it’s about how much you give away in information, and dropping a top tip into your email has outstanding results, I recently dropped the Linkedin tip to an email to seven people and I have two meetings next week based on the tip! Tell people where they can find more info on the tips and where you can get free marketing for their business, like on biz-find.co.uk, free business listings and article marketing, where you can add your facebook page and twitter for free, with a follow link to your site and they post to their massive social media for you!
Lastly you can always convince yourself that it’s not worth going to networking as
‘you know everyone, or
‘ I never meet the right people’, but like the internet, 78% of people look you up online and are reading about your company, before they buy from you.
Even though you might not get direct business on the day, there is someone there who you are branding yourself to by being regular at networking. And last of all remember :
’Sleep is the brother of death’
