Follow-Up with Your Contacts

What happens when you meet a potential client at an event and you do not follow up?

So now the event is over and you have collected a number of business cards, taken notes on the best prospects, divided the cards into Y(es), N(o), and M(aybe), now what? It is time to follow up. The best follow-up is immediate - they will remember you best if you go home that night and enter their information into your database and send a personal email or hand-written note. E-mail is much faster and you will be surprised at the fast response you get. This gives you instant contact and you can then ask how they felt about a certain event. You are sure to get a response. This gives you an immediate relationship with the individual.

Fast response gives you an edge on the competition. You had a reason to follow up (the event) and then a further reason to set that all important appointment with the right individual. It may be that you have talked with this individual extensively at the meeting and now want to discuss your business relationship further. The ultimate goal of attending an event is to get to the next appointment with certain individuals you feel you would like to do business with. It is not rocket science that you will have a common goal in business, after all, that is the type of person you sought to be introduced to in the first place. You have a quasi-relationship in the fact that you were both at the same event and the fact that you followed-up promptly. Sometimes when talking to someone at an event, they may want to talk at a later time; then write it down and follow up.

Bette Daoust, Ph.D. has been networking with others since leaving high school years ago. Realizing that no one really cared about what she did in life unless she had someone to tell and excite, She decided to find the best ways to get people's attention, be creative in how she presented herself and products, getting people to know who she was, and being visible all the time. Her friends and colleagues have often dubbed her the "Networking Queen".

Blueprint for Networking Success: 150 ways to promote yourself is the first in this series. Blueprint for Branding Yourself: Another 150 ways to promote yourself is planned for release in June 2005. For more information visit http://BlueprintBooks.com

In The News:


Bradford Networks Partners With Zycko for European Distribution
MarketWatch (press release)
CAMBRIDGE, MA, May 25, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Bradford Networks, the best choice to enable secure network access for corporate issued and personal mobile devices, today announced that it has partnered with pan-European distributor Zycko.


Phoenix networking calendar for week of May 25
Bizjournals.com
To submit networking meeting or event information, or to update these listings, email phoenixcalendars@bizjournals.com. Arizona International Growth Group, first Monday of the month, 7:30 am, SkySong, 1475 N. Scottsdale Road, Ste. 200, Scottsdale.


Networking as the Next Great Opportunity for the Channel in the Cloud
Channel Insider
The next great bottleneck is going to be the networking layer in the cloud. A recent survey of 1300 IT professionals conducted by Cisco finds that the one of biggest inhibitors to cloud computing adoption is the readiness of the network According to ...


New York Times

Cisco Ends Investment in Cius Tablet in Face of BYOD, Cloud
eWeek
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Cisco kills off Cius developmentITWorld Canada

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Kiwibox.com Enters Spanish and Latin Markets -- Launches Spanish Language ...
MarketWatch (press release)
NEW YORK, May 25, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The Kiwibox network proudly announces the integration of Spanish language versions on its social networking websites. The US based platform Kiwibox and the European KWICK! now each support Spanish ...

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TIME

The Best Social Networks for Kids Under 13
TIME
By Jo McClelland (Tecca) | May 24, 2012 | + It's no secret that social networking is a large part of our culture. Facebook and other social networking sites have minimum age requirements that some kids get around by lying about the year they were born.


Big Switch Networks Releases Tool to Promote OpenFlow Interoperability
MarketWatch (press release)
PALO ALTO, Calif., May 24, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Big Switch Networks, the leader in Open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), released OFTest, a framework for testing OpenFlow switches to insure standards compliance and interoperability.

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Smart Grid Networking and Communications
Sacramento Bee
As such, the communications networks and equipment used to construct them are shifting from the high unit volume and less expensive nodes used in smart meters, to somewhat lower unit volume, yet higher value, networking equipment and communications ...

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VentureBeat

Microsoft's social networking site So.cl now open to all users
Computerworld
By John Ribeiro IDG News Service - So.cl, an experimental research project from Microsoft, that combines social networking and search to promote learning, is now accepting all users interested in joining the site. The social networking site, ...
Is this the next Facebook? Microsoft unveils so.cl social networkFox News
Microsoft silently launches So.cl, its attempt at a social networking siteVentureBeat

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IT Winners and Losers
Barron's
These names include Cisco Systems (ticker: CSCO), Juniper Networks (JNPR) and Polycom (PLCM). In our view, F5 Networks, Radware (RDWR) and Qualcomm are stocks with positive secular trends in application networking and mobile. For the defense industry, ...

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