Networking Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint Sometimes you have to slow down to go fast.
By Ivan Misner
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Years ago, I met a woman who had a reputation as the consummate networker. She had hundreds (if not thousands) of contacts, giving her a broad network made up of people from all walks of life. She was well known in the community as the go-to person if anyone needed anything. Then, one day she pulled me aside and dropped a bombshell: Her networking efforts weren't really paying off.
She went on at some length about all the groups she went to, all the people she met and how she had made so many contacts and was continuing to make more all the time but wasn't actually getting any solid business from her efforts. When I asked her how many networking events she went to each week, she said at least five, and sometimes more.
Why wasn't she seeing real results? Because despite her amazing talent for making contacts and gaining visibility, she was never really getting to the heart of what networking is all about — building relationships. She was so busy running around and making appearances that she wasn't ever learning how to actually "work" the networks she had created and develop credibility with them.
It's true that she was visible in the community. The problem was that she viewed activity as an accomplishment in and of itself. Her network was a mile wide but only an inch deep. She had not taken the next, and most important, networking step with the many, many people in her wide-reaching network: developing the kind of rapport that would allow them to really get to know her, like her, trust her and want to pass referrals to her.
Related: How Networking Is Necessary for Effective Entrepreneurship
I recently saw the same thing with someone I've known for a few years. He made a consistent habit of going to every single networking meeting and event he could go to. Not only was he always at networking meetings, but he was always full of energy and enthusiasm from the time he arrived to the time he left. Once again, the problem was in no way due to a lack of activity, effort, visiblity or enthusiasm. The problem was that he was running around so much that he never stopped to spend the time necessary to establish the kind of long-term roots that lead to an ongoing, reciprocal referral relationship. The end result was that he got a severe case of networking burnout. He went from going everywhere and meeting everyone possible to going nowhere and meeting almost no one. A year later, his business went under.
Networking is a marathon, not a sprint
If your goal is to significantly grow your business by simply making as many contacts as possible, you will never build a powerful personal network; you're almost guaranteed to get burned out. Constantly bouncing around from event to event is exhausting and ineffective. There needs to be a balance between the visibility-creating and credibility-creating aspects of your networking efforts.
One way to accomplish this is to schedule regular one-to-ones with people you've met in order to go deeper in understanding the services they offer and how you might be able to refer them. Most importantly, it is a way for them to do the same for you.
Related: Your Network Is Your Secret Weapon
Case in point is a real estate agent in California who shared with me that her business grew dramatically during a major recession in the past because she decided to develop a network that was both wide and deep in some places.
She took my advice and did at least four one-to-ones a month with people in her network. She focused on building relationships, and once she was convinced that she had found a good business opportunity for some of her contacts, she would actually phone them on the spot and put them together with the person she was meeting with. This created powerful introductions that led to business.
From this activity, she ended up giving twice as many referrals to other people as she had in the past. But more importantly, she received twice as many referrals as she had as well. She was treating the process more like a marathon than a sprint. This is a great example of how networking is more about farming than it is about hunting, about building relationships with key people.
What is amazing about this story is that it happened at a time when businesses were dealing with the fallout from a massive recession. More importantly, this businesswoman was in a profession that was hit as hard or harder than most. Despite the conditions around her, she used her relationship-building skills to create long-term referral relationships.
When it comes to networking, sometimes you have to slow down to go fast.
