Many people have an Excel or Outlook database that provides name, title, company, phone, and email but does not offer the ability to find someone who was, but is no longer, at a medical device company or someone who is an expert in Quality Assurance. One can add columns in an Excel spreadsheet to track who has experience in each of 20 industries or Commercialization or Voice of Customer but the spreadsheet soon gets too large to search easily. I have also destroyed my Excel database more than once by not sorting carefully and ending up with data irretrievably next to the wrong person when, of course, I did not have a recent backup available.

Because you can search for keywords  in many documents simultaneously from the file directory (in Windows) or from Finder (in Apple,) here is a simple search tool. It is simply a page created in Word, for instance, one for each person, with keywords that can be searched with the assurance you have not missed any files. Contain all of these files to a single folder in your computer so searching amongst them is easier. The other trick is to keep a separate list of keywords on your desk to guarantee you always use exactly the same spelling of a keyword or company name. In other words, so you always use “QA” instead of “Quality Assurance” spelled out.  “UMN” versus “University of Minnesota” versus “University of MN.”

Below is what might be in the Word document named “Smith_Pete_notes.doc”   :

Pete Smith notes

01/12/12 had lunch to catch up
07/09 hired him for 3 month contract at Ameriprise, focus process improvement
04/03 Hired him at State of MN, 8 mo sales tax project, saved us $108K by automating testing

2002- current, Independent contractor, Software QA Consultant
• Process improvement using Six Sigma techniques
• Project management
• Quality methodology implementation
• Unit, integration, functional, system, user acceptance testing
• Creates training on quality techniques and testing
• Creates training on writing and managing requirements

Clients
Medtronic, Ameriprise, State of Minnesota, Digital River, Best Buy

Industries
Manufacturing, Finance, Retail, Mortgage, Medical, start-ups

Keywords
Contractor, SaaS, FDA compliance, POS, RUP, CMM, ISO 9000 certified Auditor, Method1, Six Sigma Black Belt, unit testing, integration testing, functional testing, system testing, user acceptance testing, training, managing requirements, writing, best practices, implementation, process improvement

Family
Wife Lisa Manufacturing Engineer at Honeywell ECC, gourmet cook (remember the chocolate croissants?)
Son Sean, 12 in 2011, is soccer nut, goalie on Blake School team

QualityWorkExcellent (glued together as one word so searchable with more software tools and distinguishable from personal skills comment)

PersonalSkillsExcellent

CheckInMar2012, CheckInJune2012  (when to call back to check in)

BirthdayFeb232012

Use LinkedIn to find people you have lost contact with. There are no restrictions on how many people you can look up if you already know the name and a former company or school. So go back to your old Rolodex and find out where those former clients, co-workers, and schoolmates are now. Then CALL them on the phone. A request to link before calling may be presumptuous at this point. I also believe smaller, very intimate LinkedIn networks are more powerful, so I am not quick to add connections in LinkedIn.

Your long-term contacts could provide a good lead-in for a junior sales person or a business associate. Consider creating a shared, internal, private database of the highest value contacts with all of your collective insights available in detailed notes. Don’t settle for a CRM with only superficial contact info.

I have developed my own database over time that goes way beyond what LinkedIn offers and provides me a measurable competitive advantage. I track people by industry keywords, strategic strengths (turnarounds, commercialization…), by who they know (close friends include CTO of 3M and Dir Engineering at Medtronic), and personal information on their family (wife Robin is gourmet cook.) I can track connections by several hundred filters and rank them by strategic or personal value. If you are not tech savvy, there is a way to do this using a simple Word document of notes per person and keywords. I will cover in my next blog. Read Harvey Mackay if you want a checklist of what to track.

Stay in closer touch in the future. Remember others can also easily find your old connections in LinkedIn and attempt to pre-empt your relationship. In your private database, plant a searchable keyword phrase like “checkMar2012″.

Consider this. People in an intimate network where everyone knows each other’s agenda and abilities well are much more likely to help each other. This is true in or out of LinkedIn. If you don’t move the relationship beyond a simple handshake, business card exchange, or connection in LinkedIn, don’t expect much assistance in return.

If you want access to someone’s network or other kinds of help from them, first make a case for why you will be a terrific ally. How clever you are and why you are a “must meet” resource. Your thought leadership.

Honor the other person’s business relationships. At a networking event I watched someone share one of his best client’s name at 3M with someone who wanted to interview there. The lead giver – we will call him Pete – with the best of intentions, called his 3M client and made a case for why the 3M executive should see the job seeker – whom we will call Kate. 3 weeks later Kate had not called, and Pete was embarrassed and annoyed that he had misused the 3M exec’s time. The 3M exec sent a negative reference on Kate to 3M HR without meeting her. He also avoided Pete’s next phone call.

If you want someone to share his/her resources, respect and cultivate the relationships that go with them.

1. You can’t expect to be the preferred resource when applying for a job at a particular company if you don’t know what product to offer. You must listen/do research to learn VOC (voice of customer) and then address the relevance and value of your product and services. Client will be looking to solve a specific problem like fix products now flat or in decline. Grow profit. Even if your resume has a track record of success, it has little value if it has questionable relevance.
2. Providing facts and features about you does not move the relationship forward by itself. Trust and relationship are crucial to the selling process. The client will prefer someone with lesser credentials on a superficial level if that person comes highly recommended by someone the client trusts. Resumes offer too little depth or proof of connection of you to the results claimed to offset that. Single interviews don’t often solve the problem because clients are not usually trained interviewers.
3. Network with several people at a company first, send resume later. Listen 2/3, talk 1/3.
4. “Consulting” with a client you would like to work for permanently without a designated selling process may distract and pre-empt closing a deal. Similarly, offering too much information during consulting, networking, and interviewing without closing the deal encourages the client to ask for more free advice/details without committing. A gift of gab does not equal selling.
5. A direct mail piece gets a .5-2% return at best. A superficial resume sent to a portal generates similar results.
6. You are highly unlikely to get what you want from a sales meeting or interview if you don’t ask for it and specify exactly what you want and provide specific rationale for deserving it. “I want $200K salary base and $200K is justified for these reasons…” “I want the open Business Development Manager role, and I am the best candidate over other Biz Dev Mgrs with the same amount of industry experience and sales success because of these reasons…” The sales trainer John Baker says 3 reasons establishes a pattern and builds just enough intrigue to consumate the deal.

If you want more in depth training on closing deals in person whether or not you are a professional sales person, read The Asking Formula, by John Baker. He is a fun trainer for any audience.

The best results occur from networking structured as “permission marketing.” What is permission marketing? Amazon.com is an example. You invite Amazon.com (give them permission) to share book descriptions and recommendations with you. Over time, they show you more books, learning your preferences, and you develop trust for their recommendations. Eventually, you are likely to purchase 35-70% of the books they recommend without hesitation.

Good business networking results from a similar, mutually beneficial, informed relationship. For that relationship to bear fruit, the other person needs to:

• Know you in some detail to know how you are relevant to him/her and what you might need
• Understand your differentiation from others with similar titles
• Trust you – which is strengthened by repeated and frequent encounters over time

The most effective currency of exchange is business information in the form of leads, advice, trade articles, cutting-edge news, compliance updates, and editorials from industry thought leaders (whitepapers, blogs, etc…) Studies show a business contact is most interested in information that helps him/her to make money, save money, or be more efficient, in that order. Doing them a personal favor like finding sports tickets ranks a distant 4^th.

You need to offer to help someone 3-4 times before they are generally willing to offer anything they consider high value in exchange. Hence, giving is more effective than asking in a networking relationship. Quality of relationship is more important than quantity of contacts. A great first question by you to a new contact is “If I could help you find a solution or solve a problem, what would it be?”  You want to uncover VOC (voice of customer) as soon as possible in the relationship. The more distant the contact initially (a friend of a friend), the more nurturing will be required before they share back.

So treat networking like any other business strategy. Devise a carefully constructed “marketing plan” with stratified target audiences and messages or articles selected to provide maximum business or social impact with a particular audience. Track your results and test market new approaches. Don’t let networking be an accidental or infrequent event when you have nothing better to do. Like any other business investment, for it to deliver the most interest, networking needs to be carefully allocated and deposited well before you need to withdraw the assets.