Coaching: 10 Tips on How to Fit Networking In

Coaches, whether you are building your own practice or coaching others, these tips work!
By Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon

1. Do you exercise? Invite someone to walk with you or enjoy a guest pass at your fitness center.
2. Get a twofer. Instead of inviting one person to lunch, ask two people who might like to know each other.
3. Do you belong to an organization, but rarely get to its monthly meeting? Put the meeting on your calendar today, so the time is blocked off. Make a note on your calendar to remind you to make a reservation.
4. Are you driving to a meeting? Ask a contact if she’d like a ride. That will give you talking time together.
5. Try piggybacking. Plan to have coffee with a contact after the meeting or ask one other family for pizza after the soccer game.
6. Sit with people you don’t know at meetings and activities. Create opportunities: Call beforehand and say, “Let’s sit together. I’d like to get to know you better.”
7. Read the newspaper or your favorite magazine with a couple of people in mind. If you see something that would be interesting or useful, clip it and mail it with a short note.
8. Are there friends or business contacts you just don’t see often enough? Set up a once-a-month get-together at a nearby coffeehouse.
9. Do you volunteer? Ask a contact if she’d like to join you to whip up the lasagna and deliver it to Ronald McDonald House.
10. Order a networking card, even if you have business cards. That way you can give friends your cell phone number and e-mail address.

Every chance meeting can become an appointment if you’ve thought ahead of time about what resources and information you’re looking for and if you’re in touch with what you have or know about that can be useful to others.
When you share your enthusiasms and goals and are generously interested in others, you are networking. Make life a networking event.

Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon are the co-founders of Contacts Count, the nationwide firm that helps individuals and organizations put the tools of networking to work in the service of business and career goals. Baber and Waymon are co-authors of Make Your Contacts Count (AMACOM, 2nd edition) and Job Hunt: 50 Tips. Their clients include Kraft, Corning, Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen, Georgetown University, and the U.S. Senate.

Anne and Lynne are the authors of the Contacts Count Licensure Program for Coaches. www.ContactsCount.com 301-589-8633