In his book, Your Personal Survival Guide to the 21st Century, business author Roy Sheppard writes:
You can tell a good networker at a party—they attract people like a magnet because they are worth knowing. They are interested in others, and they respect people deeply. They actively put individuals together. When they meet someone new, a poor networker asks the question “How useful is this person to me personally?”. A distinguished network will ask themselves, “How useful is this person to my network?”.
It is good advice, but I’ve been wondering just how do you know the value your new potential network contact brings. Indeed, how do you assess the value of existing network contacts.
Some possible criteria are:
- the duration of contact you’ve had with them
- how frequently you meet
- the impact of workload on their availablitity for conversation
- the ease with which they can be contacted
- locality
- professional speciality (common or scarce)
- the number of referrals made/used
- who they know (their network and position as a centre of influence)
- their exposure to new people
- industry
- the quality of their networking skills
Each of these will have a different weighting and it would be interesting to understand if something more formal could be created from it. That would enable me to focus on the higher leverage people in my network and serve everyone better.