It's Your Network, Stupid: A Business' Most Valuable Asset
I have been working in the technology sector longer than I care to admit and, after freelancing on the side for awhile, I recently ventured out on my own. I found that I have a knack for energizing start-ups and small businesses as a "fresh set of eyes" with a perpetual "out-of-the-box" perspective on any business.
In mid-December, one of my clients asked me if I could get a meeting with a much larger company in the hopes of establishing a strategic partnership.
I didn't have any contacts at the other company so I logged into my LinkedIn account. When I located the CEO of the company, LinkedIn informed me that I had one contact who was directly linked to him. This particular contact was my manager at a fortune 50 company nearly twenty years ago (I was enrolled in a cooperative education program and traveled out to Oregon from Boston for a 4 month job)
I sent an email to my contact outlining the opportunity and asked if he could introduce me to the CEO. That same day he made the introduction, the CEO engaged his VP of business development and we had a conference call two days later. We're currently negotiating a substantial strategic partner agreement that will be extremely valuable to both companies.
Take the time to build and maintain your business network. You never know from where your next big business deal might originate.
Comments
This is a great example of how networking works in this "Brave New World" of social networks on the Internet. Yet most business people I know don't know how or are afraid to use social networks, so I wrote an article http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/2009/02/internet-business-networking-brave-new.html to steer them in the right direction. You might enjoy it as well.
It's all About NewPartnerships