Business Builders Podcast

Effective Networking - Planning For Results

• Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian • Season 2 • Episode 31

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Successful networking means different things to different people. For some, it may be winning new work; for others, it might be finding their next job, gathering industry intelligence, or finding referral partners. Whatever your purpose is for networking, carefully planning your activities will help you generate the results you aim to achieve. 

Today's episode is part 2 of our Effective Networking Series. In this episode, we explore three key aspects of planning your networking activities. They are, mapping your network, scheduling your activities, and preparing for opportunities.

The topics we cover in this episode are: 

  • Topic overview, how to plan your networking activities
  • Mapping your network
  • Scheduling networking activities
  • Preparing to make the most of networking opportunities
  • Preparing your networking mindset
  • 10 before 10

 

Adapt_CO
Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Business Builders Podcast. Until next time, KEEP ON BUILDING !!

Brenton Gowland:

Today on The Business Builders podcast, we're continuing our series about effective networking and exploring the importance of planning. So in this episode we discuss the three major activities associated with planning. They are mapping your network, scheduling your activities, and preparing to ensure that you achieve results. Well welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

And Ron, you've been away camel trekking?

Ron Tomlian:

Yes. Most people think camel tracking is about riding camels. This is about the old camel train concept up in up in the Flinders Ranges. It was fantastic.

Brenton Gowland:

So you walk the camels and they carry all the heavy stuff.

Ron Tomlian:

Car ry all the gear. It's like through hiking but not having to carry your own gear. And it's very gourmet too I've got to say.

Brenton Gowland:

What you ate the camels?

Ron Tomlian:

No no no. The crowd that takes your camel tracking prepared beautiful food.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

And it was a great experience.

Brenton Gowland:

Sorry, that was a terrible joke.

Ron Tomlian:

Any jokes a good joke as far as I'm concerned.

Brenton Gowland:

I must admit, I didn't think you were going to ride the camels. I was a bit surprised when I found out you're walking with them.

Ron Tomlian:

No, no, no. I don't like the idea of riding camels.

Brenton Gowland:

So did you actually have your own camel that you were leading with like a rope or something?

Ron Tomlian:

The the company that does all the work and the guy who guides us takes care of the camels. He has over 20 years experience with camels.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh wow.

Ron Tomlian:

So can't recommend them highly enough.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

It's Flinders and Beyond I think is the name of the company. Little plug for them.

Brenton Gowland:

And you went up to Wilpena Pound

Ron Tomlian:

Afterwards.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh afterwards.

Ron Tomlian:

It starts in Blinman.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay.

Ron Tomlian:

It start in Blinman. So fantastic to see all the wildflowers at the moment.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

Beautiful up there. Very wet compared to what they're used to. So it's wonderful to see that the country coming alive.

Brenton Gowland:

If you're looking for a healthy adventure then sounds like a good one. So we highly recommend it.

Ron Tomlian:

I have to admit, I came back a few kilos heavier, because they really do feed you incredibly well.

Brenton Gowland:

You walk all day, and then you still put on a little bit of extra love.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

That's great. Sounds like my kind of holiday. Anyway, let's get stuck into it. At the moment. We're working on effective networking. So we're running a series. Last episode, we spoke about how to define your purpose. And some examples of purpose might be that you want to win new clients, you want to find a new job,

Ron Tomlian:

It could be about establishing new friends. It could be about finding people who can help you in terms of supply. It could be building a community of a common purpose. Whatever it is, networks help people. And it's important to define why you're building your network.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah we spoke last week about that those networks help you throughout life and in every kind of situation in your career and personal life, really, because you might have a, you want to find a partner that could be proud of networking in a social level.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah absolutely. That's probably a good one for a lot of people. So we do it without even thinking about it all the time.

Brenton Gowland:

So last episode, as we said, we spoke about defining your purpose, which then really sets the pattern for how we network. This week, we're going to speak about planning. So we'll get into that in a minute. But we'll start with our sponsors. And they are

Ron Tomlian:

Of course, SA Business Builders.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes, we run networking events for business professionals every month here in Adelaide, if you're listening internationally, obviously, you'll have networking groups in your area. But we made a little bit of a discovery recently is that we want to keep things simple. We've been finding that people way more enjoy not having a structured networking events, which is really interesting. Considering we're talking about networking,

Ron Tomlian:

Well, let's be fair, there's so many structured events out there, it's nice to have something a little bit different.

Brenton Gowland:

Its' interesting.

Ron Tomlian:

Getting back to the core of what we started with SA Business Builders, which is informal networking,

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah great. And then there's Adapt_CO, which is me, and I predominantly come in to help people with their marketing. But then I also end up helping people get unstuck, because marketing often shows where there's holes in the business, things where we need to apply strategy to be able to make sure that whatever new initiatives we come up with, they can be supported by the business. So I come in help with the marketing and then help businesses move forward. That's our sponsors for this week.

Ron Tomlian:

Fantastic.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so getting back onto our topic. We are talking about planning today, Ron, so do you want to give us a bit of an overview about this to get us started?

Ron Tomlian:

Okay, the way I see it and what we've talked about there's there's three major activities associated with planning your networking, and that is to map your network. So it's basically following the same line. Where are we now? Yep, And where do we want to be in terms of determining where you want your network to go? Or what you want it how you want to develop, then scheduling. And finally preparing. Okay, so Map, Schedule, Prepare. If you remember nothing else. Remember those three.

Brenton Gowland:

Those three words.

Ron Tomlian:

So it's worth now exploring what we mean by that.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, exactly. And I think that the really important thing, again, is to just remember we've defined our purpose. So we know that the reason we want to network, there might even be several reasons. You listed off a few things there. But it might be yes, we want to find clients, but we want to find running partners, we want to find people who can help us in our business in the back of our head. For an individual who doesn't own a business, we might go well, my future's in my network, because my next role will come out of that, etc. But anyway, we bring the purpose into the planning. So when we start looking at mapping our structure, scheduling our activities and preparing how are we going to go about networking, we keep that in the back of our head, yes, this is my purpose, this is what I want to do.

Ron Tomlian:

And let's be fair purpose will change over time. So be aware of the purpose as you're doing your ongoing planning for building your network.

Brenton Gowland:

I might just say on that as well, you talked about that, you know, where do you want to be bit and Ron is referencing the strategic, Demystifing Strategic Planning series that we ran, way back at the start of the year. So that was, I think, Episode 13, through 15, 19, something like that. And one of the key things you do in strategic planning, which is similar here is like with the map analogy, you work out where you are now, and where you want to be, which is the mapping part we're about to talk about.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. So if you if and when I'm talking about mapping your network, most people have never sat down. They have a network, we all have a network of associates of friends, family, all that sort of thing. But most people have never sat down and thought about it from the perspective of well, what is my network?

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so before you get stuck into that, can I ask, so what actually is mapping then?

Ron Tomlian:

Okay, so, literally sitting down, putting you at the centre of a piece of paper.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

And then standing to draw out.

Brenton Gowland:

Like a mind map.

Ron Tomlian:

Whatever you want to call it. Yeah, mind map, I like that. Drawing out arms, and then talking about different categories and.

Brenton Gowland:

So give us some examples of categories.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay. Okay. So it's two basic categories. It's business categories, and personal categories. And business categories, you can think about, for instance, my clients, my customers, of my myself and my business, In the next category would be referrers. People who will never be clients or unlikely to be clients, but who know people who might be clients or prospects. There are also professionals. And what I mean by professionals, is these are people who might be in different professions than me or different industries, than me or might be suppliers of mine.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay. So there are people who could be useful to me and my clients, and my network, but they're unlikely to be clients. Theres also if you're in an organisation, there's internal, you know, the internal network that you have.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, ok.

Ron Tomlian:

And don't never forget that in the internal network in an organisation can be just as important as every other network that you have.

Brenton Gowland:

Depending on the size of your business, because if you're at a place like BAE or one of these big multinationals, then that becomes more important than ever. Even if you're in a company that's 20 30, 40 people and so forth, where you start to lose contact with different parts of the organisation, it becomes very important.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. So and again, it stems back to your purpose, if your purpose is to get a promotion, building a network to get a promotion, then internal is going to be incredibly important.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay. So when we talk about mapping, we really talking about okay, creating that mind map, but that then reflects in categories that we think of right, I call them sometimes buckets that what are the main areas we're going to put people into? And so I know that we've mentioned personal there, we'll get on to that in a moment, because we're talking about business networks, predominantly. Are we?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, well, you know, never underestimate the fact that the two can overlap. If you think about your personal networks, you know, start with your family.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

Friends.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

People in your community, you know, and when I say community, I'm not just talking about physical community, you might be a part of a club, you might be part of a some type of group. And it's not about just location. It could be that you're part of a international artistic group.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, big ones are sporting clubs and churches.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

Because I know that people like we interviewed Bill Caskey. I've been listening to their podcast for a while. This was a few weeks or a few episodes ago, and they talk a lot about their church community and the business people in them that they're accessing through day to day networking activity. So yeah, I agree with that.

Ron Tomlian:

Let me give you an example. Sometimes my TEC members, the you know, the CEOs that I work with, need some advice, or some support or a service.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

I have friends in my personal network who are professionals.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Who might be ideally suited to provide that service.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Having that network means I can at least give those CEOs some idea of where to start by putting the two together. So I'm using my personal network, you know my friends network, to provide me with suppliers that would normally sit in my supplier network to help some of my clients.

Brenton Gowland:

And what I think is really important with what we're talking about when mapping because we're talking about personal relationships here at the moment is this highlights the fact that when we map people out into categories, we treat those groups of people differently. What I'm talking about is we know that we're going to give personal people in our network more attention than we are, per se, business contacts that are kind of seldom, et cetera, et cetera,

Ron Tomlian:

Mmmm, so more more acquaintances, than friends, yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

Anyway, what I'm kind of getting at is that kind of highlights that those different categories are going to have different functions for us, or different purposes. So you mentioned before that a category might be that these people are suppliers, or these people are professionals, these people are referrers, these people are potential clients. So each of those is going to be used differently as we define what we want to do with our network. So when we started this conversation about mapping and mapping your network and not many people do it. We start with who we've got right.

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

So where do we go from there? Once we've mapped out and we know, well, this is all the people in our network, all the people that I currently have access to.

Ron Tomlian:

And can I make a suggestion for the people listening, when you start this activity, you probably start with something like an A4 sheet of paper, and I strongly recommend you use a bigger sheet of paper. Because what you're going to find, if you start thinking about this, as your network is far more extensive than you think, you know, start with an A4. But you're going to very quickly move to an A3, or a piece of butchers paper. Because your network is fairly extensive, when you start thinking about it and you start mapping it out.

Brenton Gowland:

Well on that, I hear you completely. But there are different ways of mapping. So I use a CRM. So I will literally get in the way I do it is I go what buckets what main because I work by categories, I go exactly what you just said there. Client, supplier, referrer, advocate, whatever I create whatever those key areas I want to apply to people, and then I'll put them into a CRM, like a spreadsheet. So you can you can do it different ways. If you're very visual, you can do it with that mind map kind of way. But I do it by either putting people in a spreadsheet or a CRM. So I can literally see the people and say, I've got this many people in this group, this many people in that group, etc.

Ron Tomlian:

Fantastic idea. Because once you start putting this, I like starting simple. Yeah, start simple. See how extensive it is. And then you can start using the categories that make sense for you, use a CRM or whatever mechanism you want to keep a document.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, I think what you've said there the I think the mind map is really important to find the categories because it's it's about creating a bespoke network, because it's the network is personal to you, right. So in business, we work for someone and or we run our own business. And they're two different things, really. But if you work for someone, you go, am I building this network for my boss? Well, partly you are, but you're really building your own network. So you're using your bespoke network that you're building out while working for someone else to generate sales or generate leads or generate referrals for that business you're working for.

Ron Tomlian:

The other reason I like to use a visual mechanism is because the next step is to determine what you want your network to look like. And that's about saying.

Brenton Gowland:

Before and after.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, that's about saying, Okay, where do where do I need to strengthen my network and because it's guided by my purpose, but where do I need to strengthen this network. It might be clients and potential customers, it might be referrers. It might be, I need to have more contacts with professionals who can be useful to my clients, whatever the reason, when it wherever you're building your network, it will soon become obvious whether if you like where the gaps are.

Brenton Gowland:

So it's almost like you create a before and an after. So that's why that mind map really works because in my example, with a CRM, I would be applying my final state or the future state that I want my network to be, as a categorised list of terms in a CRM that I can filter people by. So it's almost a filtering system that you create. Who am I going to put in what bucket? So what you're saying is you got mind map number one, here's what my network looks like now. And then here's where I want my network to be. And then I would apply the results of that to a spreadsheet or to a, again, a CRM.

Ron Tomlian:

And it'll soon become obvious when you've got, you know hundreds of names on there that you need a different mechanism for documenting all that and keeping track of it.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah okay. So and look, I guess, the really important thing to take with this is, I got to say what I think. And I think the mapping is literally the most important part of the planning process. Because the other two things are about to talk about scheduling and preparing really them work on, right, we want to build this network in this fashion. And the mapping sets it out. And I think you're right, I think the mapping is actually a lot of hard work and a lot of thinking, right, because you're sitting there looking at names you're considering, well, this is what I'm doing with my business development plan, or this is what I'm doing with my business. These are the kinds of people I need to be talking to, then you're taking that all back and go mapping it against actual people that you're already know. And it takes time. And sometimes people can go, well, oh man, I'm spending all this time doing nothing, but you're actually doing something very, very valuable. Because the most valuable thing to a business is the list of people that are talking with you, sharing conversation. Yep. And like we've discovered in diversifying strategic planning, it's an activity that most people don't do, they don't do particularly well, and they don't realise they don't have enough information about where they are now. I actually think they don't do it, because they don't realise the importance of it. Because you know, we all naturally run to well, if I'm doing these activities, then I'm gonna get results. If not doing activities, I'm not getting results. When you spend a week, two weeks mapping out a network structure. And it can take that long, If you've spent any time in business, I've got three or four thousand people in my network directly. That takes a little bit of time to work out where they will fit.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, and I think the other thing too, is that you'll soon get a sense of in these various categories. There are people who are very close in your network, you probably have about 150, people who you know, closely, you know, and then people start moving out even in a category. I've got relatives in the United States that I've never even met.

Brenton Gowland:

That's great.

Ron Tomlian:

They're still relatives that you know, so there's people who are more distant, there are people who are closer to you, so you'll start to categorise them on that basis of proximity as well.

Brenton Gowland:

And that's really interesting, because when you map that out, and I've got the same thing, and like, for me, it was getting involved with Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale. I wanted to get involved with their network in the States and I joined that programme because I wanted to build contacts all around the world. And it's worked because we come together once a month, and we connect via zoom, and I've slowly got in contact with them. And some of them are now meeting with me and different kinds of perspectives, and so forth and talking about different things in business strategy, and slowly that's growing. So you might have areas of your map that are slow burn, because I can see a future state right right now and the next one to three years, I want to do this. But in the next 10 years, I want to be working internationally. And I want to be doing this. So you slowly work on those bits. So your map becomes very important as well at time framing or setting timeframes. For who you're going to talk to him what volume.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's why having the purpose right at the beginning to focus, you're going to be building a network, but what's the focus at the moment.

Brenton Gowland:

So I guess what we're doing is we are really stressing with all of you that are listening that the mapping is the most important part. And it's so important. But once you've got the map done, then we get to scheduling. So Ron, give us a bit of an overview, of we've got a map, where we want our network to be in the future. So what do we then do in the scheduling part when we're planning?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, this is this is really important as well. And it's putting the time aside on a regular basis to undertake some of this work. Some of the doing that we'll talk about next time making sure that you are spending, it's, it's a case of the urgent versus the important. The urgent will always win. But networking is important, because it will help you in the long term. So making sure you put time aside in your diary to undertake the activities. And some of those activities might be things like events, writing blogs, LinkedIn posts, and we'll talk about all that in the in the doing stuff. But making sure that you have allocated some time for this on a regular basis. And one that's really important is when you've done all these things, you know, you've gone to events, and you've posted your blogs, and all that sort of fun stuff. Having time to follow up afterwards. So allocating some time, not just for the doing, but for the follow up and even in some cases, even the planning. You know, what's, what's my next step. So making sure that you've got diarized time for doing this on a regular basis.

Brenton Gowland:

Excellent. So the scheduling part is literally scheduling the activities that you're going to do as part of your networking activities to build your network to match the map that you've created.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think part of part of that scheduling has to be determining if I want to, for the sake of argument, talk to referrers that's that's where I really need to build my strength in my network. Where do they hang out? And I'm not talking about physically.

Brenton Gowland:

But what kind of businesses are they because if you're an accountant, your referrers might be financial advisors or people who are dealing with businesses. Like, it might even be BDM people, because you want to win new clients to be in your accounting firm. If you're a defence company, it's different if you're a software company its different again.

Ron Tomlian:

So it's about figuring out where they hang out. And like I say, hangout could be physically, you know, what events do they go to? It could be, do accountants participate in LinkedIn? Or are they more on Facebook or some other mechanism? So thinking about where these people are, and how I'm going to get to contact them?

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so you would then go through and, of course, you've got your purpose, and you've got your map. So that's going to influence the type of activities you're gonna go to, we want to work out where they're hanging out. But you also might, I mean, there's a whole heap of strategies here. You almost also might want to go, well, what do I want to sponsor? What other activities could we be doing? What what sporting events? Can we be going to what, again, online digital kind of activities can we be engaged in? What communities can we be engaged with? Who can we be talking about that's, where can we find out about what kind of things to go to? Because part of our networking might be getting in with people, you talk about referrers, who can say, well, you should be going to this, you should be going to that? How do we share networks? All of those things? I agree with that 100%. And so then the schedule part is that we're actually, as you said earlier, putting this in the diary. And what I really love is the fact that you talked about scheduling the follow up, because that's the thing that everyone misses out on, I know that when we go to a major event, and we talk with BD people, it's really critical that you follow up within 24 to 48 hours. Otherwise, there's a trailing kind of success rate that drops and drops and drops and drops, because people forget what you've talked about. So if you don't follow up fairly quickly, you're going to lose those opportunities.

Ron Tomlian:

And again, and we'll talk about this in the doing, but the follow up should be about how can I demonstrate my usefulness to this person. Or how can I demonstrate a connection to this person, it's not about, I just want to make sure that he knows who I am. It's I want to make sure that he, I'm doing something useful to him. And that's when we talk about doing that's about the curiosity.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so now, as far as planning is concerned, we've talked about mapping our network, we've talked about then scheduling our activities, actually putting them in the diary, scheduling our follow ups. And then the last point that we were going to talk about is then we prepare, we prepare for the doing. So Ron, talk us through what are the things we need to do? We've got a we've got our schedule, we know what events we're going to do, how do we prepare to make the most of our networking opportunities?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, it could be from simple things like making sure when I go to an activity, I've got my business cards, it can be making sure that I have different versions of my new modified elevator pitch than and if you want to, if you want to know what I'm talking about there, look at episode.

Brenton Gowland:

12.

Ron Tomlian:

12 of Business Builders, because we talked about how the elevator pitch needs to change.

Brenton Gowland:

That's another episode that really surprised me, because people listened to that. It's called the elevator pitch must evolve. That just keeps getting people listening to I think we struck a nerve there.

Ron Tomlian:

And it is because, you know, the elevator pitch was a great idea when it started. But it did have to evolve, it does have to evolve. But make sure you've got that ready.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, so it's about having the right stories collected and ready to go so that you can talk to people at different levels. So if I'm talking to a referrer, these are the kinds of stories I'm going to tell, but you have to also then prepare your questions Ron. Because you need to be able to, we talked about mapping your network, you need to be able to ask questions to determine where these people fit on your map.

Ron Tomlian:

And being able to not necessarily put people in boxes, but categorise and making sure that you're ready to ask the right sort of questions of this person in their genuine curiosity. And I'd say one of the other things is the mindset that you're going to go into this networking with, you know, how am I going to prepare myself just before the event to be in the right mindset, not to sell. But to be curious about who the people I'm talking to are?

Brenton Gowland:

I think a good way to do that is to understand your process, right. And because this is something that people fall down in. They go, oh, I gotta build my network, I've got to do this. So they want immediate results. But if you start and, again, I keep referring back to different conversations when we spoke to Bill Caskey. One of the things he said was that BD people if they really want to get good at what they want to do as I need to be funnel conscious, right. So you know, the top of the funnel is kind of awareness so that people know you exist, and and then there's different stages of the funnel all the way down to a sale, right. What that was kind of getting at was that I understand when I'm talking to someone and we're just getting an awareness, kind of, of us. We're not going to take them straight down to a sale, we need to understand that they're at the top of the funnel, and that that's a different conversation to a bottom of the funnel conversation where they're already trust is established.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes, and a lot of this is about going in with the intention of building connection, not making a sale.

Brenton Gowland:

Now the stages of the funnel just because my brain didn't allow me to remember them earlier, I think it is awareness, consideration and close. Is that correct?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, there's different models.

Brenton Gowland:

There's differnet versions.

Ron Tomlian:

I always remember that because it's easy. The AIDA model.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action.

Brenton Gowland:

Right, ok.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's what we're trying to where people at, in when I'm talking to them.

Brenton Gowland:

Most of the digital funnels are kind of three stage, which is awareness, consideration and close.

Ron Tomlian:

I'm old school, so.

Brenton Gowland:

I know, that's why we work. You're my mentor. I'm the young, funky, almost 50 year old dude.

Ron Tomlian:

Young.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, I don't know about that anymore. I just realised the other day, I'm two years off 50. Damn it.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, well. That ship has saled in my case.

Brenton Gowland:

Excellent. Anyway, so again, we're just closing off on mindset, understanding your process, will really help you set the right mindset. I'm going into a meeting, a situation, I'm meeting new people. It's all about awareness. Awareness is not about closing, right. So awareness is about getting familiar with people understanding them. So having that understanding of what stage of the funnel you're at, when you're talking to people is important.

Ron Tomlian:

And don't forget, while you're there with a purpose, and it's good to have that purpose, at the front of your mind, don't forget you'll meet people who will enhance your network no matter what. So they might not be important to you today, but knowing that they can build your network is important. And again, that's then about having that genuine, curiosity. How is this person? Where do they fit in my network? And how can I be useful to them? And they be useful to me?

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so we've talked about in preparing so far, having your elevator pitch ready to go, having your mindset in the right place. And then I think another one is having the right materials so that we know that when we go to an event, do we need a business card? I went to an event yesterday, and everyone wanted business cards. And I usually just do the thing where I'm tapping a phone with LinkedIn and teaching people how to use the scan codes and things, and they're oh, didn't know LinkedIn could do that. Anyway, there's different times when business cards are appropriate. If you're in defence, you'll have a quad chart, if you're at a tradeshow you're going to have some sort of capability statement. I think having those materials at least with your marketing department. Guys, I need a this, I need a that. Being prepared well in advance is super important. Very much, so. And I might just add one other thing in here that we haven't really spoken about, because we've been talking about events a lot. So when you plan your activities, one of the things you might do is you might say, every morning, I'm going to bring three people, before 10 o'clock.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh great story there, great story there. A fantastic speaker on our TEC circuit, guy called Philip Hesketh, from the UK, I talked about when he was in advertising. And he realised that he was losing clients. So his business was losing clients. So he created this mechanism, 10 before 10 on Tuesday. He would call 10 of his existing clients before 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning. He wouldn't get through to all of them.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

He'd have the list ready, as his PA would prepare the list. And he'd be talking to them about their existing, the work they were doing, what they thought. But what was important was not actually the conversations, it was the rhythm, or the cadence.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Of getting into that. 10 before 10 on Tuesday.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's what I was talking about before, when I was talking about the fact that you have to schedule this stuff. If it doesn't happen, it will get pushed to one side because of the urgent.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep and my point. And I think that's fantastic. But my point is been preparing the materials, when you've scheduled, okay, that's an activity. I'm going to do ten before ten on a Tuesday. That you actually schedule, like you create an agenda for these conversations that you know, what you're going to speak to are the questions you're going to ask and preparing the materials might mean preparing the script, you don't have to be so prescriptive that is like, here's exactly what I'm going to say because it's not a cold call. It's like no, here's the three points. I'm going to cover.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh and he would always cover what did we do it? How are you doing at the moment? And then he would ask a killer question.

Brenton Gowland:

What's that question?

Ron Tomlian:

He would, he would say, you know, on a scale of one to 10 how we're doing? And people say seven or something like that. And most people so how do we get to a 10? And he would realise

Brenton Gowland:

You've just defined Net Promoter Score.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I know.

Brenton Gowland:

Killer question.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. He would say not how do we get to a ten, how do we get to an eight? If you give us a seven? How do we get to an eight?

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, I like it.

Ron Tomlian:

There are some people I know, TEC members, who will say I'll never give you a ten. But I will give you one more if you do this.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

So people can think about that.

Brenton Gowland:

Now if you're listening and you want to learn more about this, look up Net Promoter Score, just Google it and it will give you a full definition of what we're talking about.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

They are good questions. So okay, so in the preparation, we get our elevator pitch, we set our mindset, we get our materials. And I think what I want to really drill in, is the thing that we also do when we're preparing, is we prepare our response to these people you talked about follow up in the scheduling. But we actually almost prepare our responses before we've gone to the event. So and what I mean by that is like, I'll have a CRM, I'll have a bunch of written templates that I've created over time, where it'll be, you know, I might have the business cards or whatever. And I'll, I'll put them into whatever my system is. And I'll send an email straight away from this template that has three points in it maybe has a document, whatever it is, but it will just be prefixed ready to go. And that's especially important. If you go to an event where you meet 20 people, you might go, I want to specifically respond to these three people by ringing them. But the rest of them, I'm not sure, you know, they might fit these different buckets, but I want to touch base with them. So I'm going to have this response ready to go. So I don't have to spend a whole day writing 1,000 responses to different people.

Ron Tomlian:

Given that follow up is the thing that a lot of people get wrong when they're doing networking, make it simple for yourself by doing some preparation.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I know what my process is. So I went to an event yesterday, about 10 to 15, people gave me their cards and said they wanted to chat, then there's a whole bunch of other people that we're going to send some material to. So I responded to those 10 to 15, people literally prepared the email straight after the event, sheduled them to go the next morning at eight o'clock, so that there was a bit of a bit of time elapsed, I wasn't sending out on the same day. But it's, it's all happened automatically. And it took me about half an hour to prepare those responses, because I already had all the bits and pieces ready to go.

Ron Tomlian:

Fantastic.

Brenton Gowland:

And then it's about being efficient. And then a certain amount of those people will respond and those relationships will then start to build slowly over time.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's all about having those processes, make it simple for yourself, have the processes ready.

Brenton Gowland:

So to review, you need to map your network where it is now and where you want it to be. Because the where, combined with your purpose to where you want it to be will help you then determine the activities you need to shedule. And then you spend time scheduling those activities. And last but not least you do the preparation for the actual doing, which we'll talk about in the next episode.

Ron Tomlian:

Fantastic. I love the fact that we've given people a really easy, step by step approach to doing something that a lot of people do very badly.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. And I think it's just understanding it because I think there comes a point where you understand that you need to get better at these things. And sometimes it's difficult to find the, well, where's the where to go out on networking, because if you, I know you've talked about when we talked about strategic planning, if you want to see all the books on strategic planning, they will feel a lot of libraries and they'll be thick and whatever else. So it's the same with networking. There are books on books, on books on books. Where's the quick guide that can show me how to do this. And that's why I like the fact that we're doing this series right now because I think people need it.

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. Well, on that basis. We've done the planning, next time they're doing.

Brenton Gowland:

Well I look forward to the doing Ron.

Ron Tomlian:

So it's goodbye from me

Brenton Gowland:

And goodbye from me. We will see you in a couple of weeks and we're looking forward to talking about getting stuck into the activities. Bye for now.