Business networking can be tough; it’s easy to make mistakes. The good news is, once you can analyze what’s lacking from your current strategies, you can build a great new plan.

The analysis
Before creating new strategies, consider asking yourself a few questions about the results of your previous attempts. Some questions to think about:

• Did you meet or exceed your goals for revenue and business in the previous year? What percentage of this work did you create through a personal networking program? How many new clients were “ideal”?
• How many clients hired you for additional business last year? How many referrals did you get from clients, colleagues, or other professionals?
• How much exposure did you have to your ideal prospective clients through speeches, seminars, or articles? How often and how well did you showcase your capabilities to ideal prospects?
• How many hours per week (on average) did you spend on networking and marketing (vs. selling)? How many weeks did you do little or no marketing?

Don’ts (and do’s)
After you complete the review, consider the following suggestions for your new strategy.

• Don’t be a clone. Have a niche. However, do go after people who have things in common with your existing clients. In other words, go with what works and expand it. Generate exposure through speeches, seminars, and articles, and also join the right professional organizations.
• Don’t take your best clients for granted. Deepen your relationships with your top customers. Create a database of the people you have worked with over the past year or two and order them in terms of current and future revenue potential. Follow up your plan with lunches or breakfasts, meetings, and personal notes. Keep them in the loop with a current newsletter or article with the latest topicality. Don’t rely on impersonal or insincere methods.
• Don’t try to read minds. If you want to get referrals, tell people. Define the type of prospects who you will not invest time in pursuing this year. Then, tell them exactly the type of person whom you would like them to introduce you to and why. Turn your clients and allies into your sales force.
• Don’t waste time with shallow referrals. Don’t settle for referrals that yield no high-quality personal introductions. Make sure your clients and professional allies are targeting the same type of people as you and make sure that they are good at business development. Shift your energy to pursuing your ideal clients, even if you have to take a short-term cash flow hit.
• Don’t spin your wheels. Learn to master networking. And get your clients, contacts, and professional allies to work with you and for you. Take a course in how to network and then develop a specific networking plan for the year. Who are your target clients? Where do they congregate? Who knows a lot of them? How can these people help you to make contact with your ideal clients?
• Don’t practice “groundhog day” networking. It’s not a good idea to keep marketing yourself the same way over and over again. Define your goals in terms of revenue, hours billed, number of clients, revenue by client, type of business, and so on. Keep these goals in a prominent place and measure your progress against them each week. Find a few business development books, tapes, CDs, or seminars you can use. Trade best practices. Screen options rigorously in light of your client goals. Try one new method each month.
• Don’t get too comfortable. Don’t expect a new client automatically to know you and the service you provide. When you meet a client, tell that person about yourself and specifically identify how you can help him or her. Don’t rely on your reputation.
• Don’t fly solo. An “entrepreneurial” coach can offer advice. Think of somebody whom you know and respect and is good at business development. It can be a professional at your firm, another firm, or even somebody in a related field.

By now, it’s obvious that the networking “don’ts” generate a host of “do’s” that your firm can try.

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