In today’s work environment, business opportunities quite often originate from one’s personal network. Therefore, it is essential to carefully foster your social network to ensure this source of business opportunities is not drying up. As business coming from your personal network is quite often not direct business with your contacts but rather personal referrals and recommendations, it is important to foster your network also from a strategic point of view.

See it as a continuous process, based on the following questions:

• What do I want to achieve?
• How do I get there? What actions do I have to take in order to achieve my goal?
• What resources (human, capital, etc) do I need?
• Which people (influencers, decision-makers) do I know?
• What is their role “in the game”?
• Am I well connected in my target industry?
• What do I have to do in the short-, mid- and long-term to improve my position?

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Martin Koser from frogpond held a couple of interesting sessions about social networks and their application in an enterprise context. You can also find some summaries of sessions he attended, quite helpful for those of you who could not make it to Munich.

What’s all this fuss about working in the 21st century is dramatically different from the working environment of the last century?

Remember these conferences in a dimmed hotel room (preferably without any daylight), with one guy running the show, trying to convince the audience that he has the best product in the world? And all the others trying not to fall asleep…

The Barcamp series (I just attended my first Barcamp in Munich this weekend) is completely different: no agenda, no dull powerpoint slides, but a very interactive discussion and networking event with people willing to contribute to the success of the event.

For those of you not familiar with the format: In the morning, the agenda is empty. Participants suggest sessions they are willing to hold, and if the feedback from the audience seems encouraging, they just schedule the session for one of the available slots. Topics range from Web 2.0, social networks to business models and venture capital (one of the sessions I offered) to search engine optimization. Even more exotic sessions like photography have been offered in Munich.

From my very personal impression, most of the participants are either freelancers, working in startups or are working on projects to turn into a company later on – very entrepreneurial, with a lot of insights to share. You can tell during the sessions that people just share the experiences of their daily work instead somebody reading slides he received just an hour ago.

For me, the barcamp format is an indication of the way work will be organised in the future: networked, with independent professionals, self organising (to a much higher degree than in the past): new opportunities arise on the go…

So I think it is not too bold to state that barcamp is a conference format for the 21st century.

PS.: Special Thanks to the guys organising the events, Franz Patzig and Jörg Battermann: you did an excellent job! Cisco as main sponsor for location and catering ensured that all participants could stay focussed on content instead on infrastructure issues.

For being successful in your business life an excellent network makes things easier. As we already pointed out in “Identifying customers with social networking” knowing people is only a competitive advantage when people like you and trust your competence. Hand in hand with this goes that creating long-term relationships is very important as you can generate the best results for your business with them. Good reputation and trust are two reasons for this (see “How to get customer loyality through social networking“).
Rajesh Setty picks up this topic in his really interesting manifesto “Making the most of your time” on “Change this” as well as on his blog. Although the title might be a bit misleading as you would expect mainly notes about time management in general. Whereas you can find some very good thoughts about how to establish long-lasting, valuable contacts as well.

His answer of how to get people to like you and establish long-term contacts is pretty old: “Give first and then you get”. Or as others call

it more scientifically “the law of reciprocity”.

Here are some points to establish long-term relationship pointed out in the article:

• Create more opportunities for them as compared to the request you make
• Help people identify their strengths
• Introduce people in your network that are opportunities for each other

Especially the last point (introducing people with each other that are not yet personally connected) provides your contacts real value.
As doing this usually does not require much effort on your side, it is a highly effective practice. Whenever you talk to someone ask yourself “is there somebody in my network where it is beneficial for both of them to get to know each other”?

It’s simple. And it’s very effective.

Every phase of the sales process requires different activities and therefore different network structures are the most efficient ones. We have already talked about the best network structure for “identifying customers” and “finding solutions during a project”.

Now I would like to focus on customer care. Once the deal is closed (when you sell a product) or the project is successfully finished (when you sell a service) it’s crucial to know the best networking techniques to remain in the memories with your customer and maintain a good reputation.

When you’re doing project work the easiest way to find new business opportunities is during the project itself. At this time you have very good insight into your customer’s challenges and pains. Those are the best conditions for finding solutions to your customer’s problems, especially as you see things from a neutral perspective.

What should a successful network for customer loyalty look like?

• direct contacts to deciders of you customers
• deciders know other powerful contacts in your customer’s company or in the market (they have a bridge function)
• loose contact frequency

Employing this sort of network you can keep in contact with the influential people and you can quickly get new and exclusive information in an informal way. If a new business opportunity appears, you will be in a good position to take advantage of it.

Here are some examples for ways to maintain your reputation and keep touch with your contacts. Your customer will feel that he is in good hands.

Writing an email with “how are you?” or “I just wanted to say hello” is probably not the best way to stay in contact with your customer.

Communication to your customer should always have a value and a reason.
For example passing on clippings of relevant articles is a simple way to give valuable information to your customer.
Even if it sounds trivial, writing personal Christmas, Easter or Birthday emails are additional examples that produced good results. Many customers were happy about this way of addressing them and gave me a call afterwards to say thank you. Small efforts with a huge impact.

As important as it is to stay in contact with your customers you should always know when you are doing too much. The best network structure won’t help you then.

Chances are we all know an individual who uses every opportunity to get into business. He tries to do business in an obviously insincere manner or at an inappropriate moment e.g. when you run into him by accident. If you are always in a selling mode the chances are high that your contacts will get reluctant to keep in touch with you or do business with you ever again.