Blog: Networking lessons from 15 years at Sift

Over the years, many of Sift’s clients and business relationships have come from my personal networking.  Meeting people at industry dinners, conferences and seminars can fast-track all normal forms of lead development (as well as supplement them occasionally).

My general aim has been over time to be viewed as a trusted, reliable friend and expert within the sector.  This is an on-going long term project, but the people who do it better than others reap significant benefits.  So, a few thoughts on networking from the last 15 years growing Sift.

Prepare in advance – For dinners or smaller events, usually you get sent a list of attendees in advance.  Spend 15 minutes researching the list, thinking about angles; this is a good opportunity to chat to a colleague if you know your organisation/company must have had dealings with X before.  And if you haven’t got a list of attendees, there might be a list of organisations attending, in which case the same discipline applies.  And if you’ve got nothing to go on, perhaps you shouldn’t be attending; or alternatively, think through the people who might be going.

In all cases, think through what you’ll say to people, and crucially, how you’ll position your business – I’m not a subscriber to the view that one size fits all for elevator pitchs.

Proactively work events – Remember that the principal objective of attending events is to meet people and talk to contacts, not to listen to presentations.  You need to be proactive.  Using the attendee list, search for the people you want to talk to, and don’t be afraid to move on after you’ve had a 5 minute catch-up with someone.

In conversation, you need to take chances; you won’t always get 5 minutes to comprehensively work out if there are any angles.  So make an educated guess based on name badges, the context of the event, the research you’ve done in advance, clothing, demeanour, etc.

If there’s an opportunity, always try to ask a question early in the event and name check yourself properly.  And if you don’t get to someone you want to talk to, follow up with a ‘Saw you on the attendee list this week, but didn’t catch you at lunch.  Would love to bounce an idea off you/get your view on’, etc.  More on working events in this excellent blog post by Mark Suster.

Be open – Life is too short to spend time blabbing about all your (alleged) successes; and you’ll gain very little from the conversations.  I take the approach that if I haven’t yet struck up an open relationship with someone, I’ll break the ice by being open about Sift, or me, or the CEO role, etc.  Of course, you have to think about what you divulge, and there are degrees of openness.  The fundamental point being if you open up, people will open up back.

Follow up – Follow up with a personal message within no more than a week.  It’s more important to make a connection than anything else.  Having said that, when you get a sniff at a sale opportunity, you need to have the confidence to sell hard.

Record keeping – Good networkers are anal about record-keeping.  It doesn’t really matter what system you use, the principal is that every time you meet or talk (or even get an email) with one of your external contacts, put a note in the system.  I usually just enter something like, “Chatted again at the XXXX event Mar ’11”.  And crucially as people move organisation, don’t create duplicate records for them, transfer their personal record to the new organisation, remembering to put a note saying where they used to work.  I also keep copies of interesting email exchanges with approx. 150 (non-client) companies that I talk to/monitor in folders.

Communicate with your customer base regularly – It’s not possible to meet all your contacts for a beer regularly; and circumstances chance so often that someone you considered as having a low usefulness quotient can change status without you knowing; so you have to have a way to wash a message over your whole contact base occasionally.  To some extent you can do this with LinkedIn status updates, but in my experience the absolute best way of doing this is to send out a personal update email to your contacts.  I’ve therefore been sending out a personal Sift Update two or three times a year since 1997, which currently goes to just over 1,000 contacts.

And I don’t just ignore the bounce and out of office messages.  The former tell you who’s moving around; presupposing you can find out where they’ve gone to, it then gives you an opportunity to make contact (when you want to follow them).  By contrast, when you’re more interested in the role they used to fill, you can approach the new post holder.  The out of office messages are also a gold mine of information, from mobile numbers, details of personal assistants to holiday destinations.  [For those of you with an interest in board games, this was my angle at Cluedo when I was a kid, ie by listening to everyone else’s questions and answers.]

LinkedIn – I use LinkedIn as a way of keeping tabs on some of the activities of the people I’m connected to (currently approx. 460); and in particular to grab their most recent email address for the Sift Update if their address fails or I want to make contact.  I only accept requests from people I know, or who have met; but am toying with the idea of culling the list of people who I can’t recall.  Personally, I think of LinkedIn as FaceBook for business, at least in the UK.

Get on the speaker roster – This is one of the key ways that I’ve been able to publicise Sift over the years.  I’m not the world’s greatest speaker, but have probably done 40 over the years at various events.  Public speaking is a separate topic, but my philosophy has again been predominantly to be open, personal and straight.

Finally, networking is the best way to learn about your industry, meet a fascinating range of people, get out of the office; and generally makes the job fascinating, stimulating and worthwhile!