Career Transitions, recent conversations.

With today’s economy in flux, employees are readily networking, talking with recruiters more frequently, and keeping options open as there is a fair amount of global uncertainty.  In the last few weeks, I’ve had a significant increase in the number of my professional contacts asking me for career advice, which is flattering that they’d hold my opinion on transitions in such high regard.

Let me sum up these conversations in a few bullets and we’ll dig into each one – the objective is to get an interview if you are seeking a gig, so this advice is focused on getting the interview.   At the high level, this is what our conversations net out to be:

• Understand the situation and variables at play
• Do I spend time with recruiters?
  
• Network
  
• Know your unique value proposition
  
• Leverage every tool available (VisualCV, blogs, twitter, etc.)

Let’s look a bit deeper at each one of these

• Understand the situation and variables at play

There is no cookie cutter, one sized fits all advice structure to answer ‘how should I find my next opportunity?’  There are so many variables at play – your current situation being one.  For the lucky ones that are working I ask, ‘is it really that bad that you need to leave for purported greener pastures?’ or ‘what prompts you to make a change in this economic environment?  For those that are employed, today’s advice has been ‘keep with what you have.’  There are too many people right now competing for too few jobs, you are typically better off focused on what you have than on what you do not have.  However, it is always best to change gigs when you have a gig if the choice is yours.

• Recruiters

While you are contemplating a transition, I’ve found two books a must read to better understand how retained recruiters think:  Rites of Passage at $100k+ by John Lucht, and 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers by Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart.    Keep in mind that times have changed a bit in the recruiting industry in the last year, those that are new to using recruiters could spend an inordinate amount of time with the wrong type of recruiter thinking they are progressing in their job search when in reality they may be spinning their wheels.

• Network

This is the number one way to find out who is interviewing/hiring and what for – networking.   You should be networking ALL the time, not just in transition, and it should be done in a way that you are helping the other person at some point in the conversation.  Whether it be linkedin or face to face, really commit to networking!  See my previous post here.  The other thing I’d add here is when preparing for an interview, it is helpful to network into existing employees or former employees to gain an added edge on what your competition may be missing out on.  Former employees are usually quite eager to want to share information, but my only suggestion is to keep all the conversations above board so no one is put in jeopardy.

• Know your unique value proposition

I’m a marketing person and focus on where I differentiate relative to the 100s of others that are applying for a job.  It all boils down to a few simple elements—do you make money, save money, or save time better than anyone else in the industry and if you do, how do you explicitly do it?  Be prepared to share vivid, to the point answers.

• Leverage every tool available (VisualCV, blogs, twitter, etc.)

LinkedIn of course is valuable tool to get a sense of who knows who when networking.  If you are able to complete a VisualCV, I’d highly recommend it;  in about a year’s time, I’ve had 5000 views of my background on this link here without much proactive advertising on my part – all for free!  While it has not yet led to any direct job opportunities yet, it does not hurt to promote your capabilities in a visual way.

What do you find that is working well in your transition?

http://www.alphainventions.com/

Revenue Traction = Sales+Marketing Alignment

To maximize a company’s revenue result and customer experience, B2B Sales and Marketing teams need to align around similar objectives.  Recent trends point to both sales and marketing are getting increased scrutiny for the following reasons:

1. Suspect to prospect to deal close time has increased significantly these last two quarters compared to quarters past due to the economy.
2. ROI is demanded in all investments – Marketing is an investment (typically 5-7% of revenues of B2B companies >$500M  – or expenditure if you are a CFO  )

In most B2B companies that are $50M+ in revenue size, there are typically separate heads of marketing and sales, thus leading to an increased chance that marketing is disconnected from the sales process, sales people, or customers.   Consequently, marketing could celebrate their own ‘lead quantity’ which is handed off to sales versus the actual impact marketing makes on actual revenue.  So what approach could sales and marketing better work with one another in this economic environment?

• A pipeline commitment: Marketing needs to take a more active role getting involved with the traditional sales pipeline.  With better sales pipeline visibility (ala Salesforce.com), marketing needs to create the right programs to accelerate deals in the later stages of the pipeline.  Specifically, competitive positioning talking points to best arm the sales organization, references of positive customers, or business case tools (Alinean, Mindseye Analytics) that help meet net new objections in the latter part of the selling cycles.

• A Marketing SLA (service level agreement) between the head of sales who is the primary internal customer and her marketing counterpart, initiated by the marketing leader:  Sales should demand lead quality SLA—how many leads and under what conditions are a lead considered a keeper by a sales organization?

• Deal autopsy—figure out how deals become deals (both wins and the rare losses companies experience).  What programs are impacting the selling cycles, what messages, what ROI tools?  Once this feedback is gained, test drive what are the winning concepts with a prospect to calibrate feedback.  The resulting information becomes the genesys of a deal play book to help calibrate new sales efforts.

It’s all about sales and marketing effectiveness in our new economy!  What have you found effective to push your revenue cycles and why is that effective for you?

http://www.alphainventions.com/

Accelerate Revenue NOW: Be a Student of the Game

While President Obama was across town in Tempe, Arizona giving a commencement speech emphasizing how to keep studying beyond school, I attended the annual SiriusDecisons Best Practices Summit for Sales & Marketing leaders (see Twitter) in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.   My objective in attending this year’s conference was to study and gain a more complete understanding of how to best drive new revenue in a challenging economic environment–by either  driving existing prospecting opportunities or net new opportunities–and then listen to what marketing programs make a visible impact in accelerating revenue in these areas.  In attendance with me were sales and marketing leaders from Omniture,  Cisco, Symantec, Ilumina, PerkinElmer, Pitney Bowes, IBM, HP, BlueCoat, Cox, Ariba, McAfee, SAP, Aspect, and Juniper among others.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been a Sirius customer for nearly 6 years and their most referenced customer based on YouTube views/testimonials they’ve recorded over the last few years. As head of marketing in one high tech company, I quadrupled revenue to $200mm in a down economic environment leveraging a combination of my own marketing programs with benchmarked sales/marketing best practices from Sirius to help me tune my marketing effectiveness;  they later helped me and my team calibrate and think through a comprehensive, global field marketing strategy based on best practices of similar sized companies.   I also presented my best practice marketing programs to other leading high tech sales and marketing leaders.

Here are 10 key takeaways from the Summit of LEADING SALES AND MARKETING ORGANIZATIONS…these organizations are:

1.  innovating around marketing structure to leverage assets and impact sales productivity (function of company size and channel strategy)
2. leveraging technologies focused on sales enablement and pipeline transparency/analysis (function of investment in sales + marketing automation)
3. applying marketing resources across the entire opportunity life cycle, driving close collaboration between sales and marketing (marketing operations plays a key role here)
4. mandating marketing ROI, which sharpens measurement and drives greater alignment with sales (seems obvious in this economic environment, surprising # of companies work in progress here).

5. leveraging new marketing technologies to increase reach and quality, decrease costs and measure results (social media helps in this regard)

6.  blazing a trail with social media, and linking reputation and demand creation activities (see my prior posts here on this topic)
7. enabling sales via a progressive approach to building sales playbooks (start in increments, prove that it works, then grow it)
8. architecting their channel programs using three lenses: supplier-to-partner, partner-to-customer, and supplier-to-customer
9. optimizing the entire demand life cycle (nurturing leads becomes more important-every lead counts)
10.closing the enormous marketing skills gap created by new marketing technologies and requirements (new technologies creates new opportunties)

Statistics prove that organizations that have embraced an integrated sales and marketing approach vastly outperform (revenue and profit) than those that have not.   To get this synergy, Marketing needs to drive a closed loop lead system that has a specific hand off and visibility to sales with the right measurement mechanisms in place.   Both Sales and Marketing should have joint visibility to the sales pipeline (ie prospects at various stages of the sales funnel).    The benefit to sales in sharing pipeline visibility is becoming one of those firms that wildly succeed versus a marginally performing organization.

In addition to the presentations, I found value in Alinean, one of the many participating vendors given their ability to help provide prospects with a clear TCO/ROI proposition (more on this later.)

This event was well worth the time and money investment for any attendee;  if you are debating about attending or sending a sales or marketing leader next year, do not hesitate.  The ROI is proven based on money saved on not making mistakes and money gained by being a ’student of the game’ –by studying the best practices of how to best accelerate revenue NOW in a challenging economic climate.

http://www.alphainventions.com

The Future in Interactive Content

Imagine watching a television show while you interact in real time without texting via your cell phone or using a laptop with a TV.  The nexis of internet content, broadcast television, and social media has arrived–in one viewing screen.

I had the chance to see Adobe’s HOT new technology at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) in the sweltering 96 degree weather in Las Vegas with a purported 80,000 attendees this week. Adobe has imbedded Flash onto the chip set within set top boxes, Blu-Ray devices, and other internet ready, mobile devices enabling a viewer to watch and interact with streaming content.

Flash is installed on about 98% of PCs and almost 80% of all online video is delivered using Flash.

This announcement changes the game for the following reasons:

1. Enables a true interactive, on demand television experience from the living room. Imagine interacting with American Idol or ESPN in real time with one device instead of two.

2. Assuming content rights issues get navigated, this technology enables an over the top, content play—what does that mean to the ecosystem of content providers and operators?

• Puts traditional cable operators on notice–the old subscription model of cable will no longer work when unlimited internet content can be viewed through the television (think of Hulu on steroids).

• Puts broadcast advertiser model on its head–trackable ads such as those delivered via Google or ZillionTV will become more important as marketers demand ROI from advertising investments in broadcast media

• Satellite providers (DISH, DirecTV) who wrestle with an interactive capability risk becoming even more obsolete with this new internet interactive capability as the internet has unlimited content capability and satellite is typically a one-way broadcast experience that prohibits interactivity.

• Enables new markets such as new social media applications, widgets for television, streaming video in high definition, and applications that can run in real time alongside video broadcasts, such as interactive news tickers, sport scores, quizzes and the weather. Televisions can be used as search engines and new social media uses will emerge.

Adobe is aiming to become the global standard for all rich media in the “three screen” world – PC, TV, and mobile. Up to 40% of all mobile devices shipped in 2008 are expected to carry Flash Lite.  It is a huge win for Adobe and the internet/streaming industries, although it will take some time before an impact is felt at the consumer level. New consumer set top boxes will take some time to install as the refresh cycle is typically long for upgrades. Having said that, this is clearly an exciting announcement and game changing day!

http://alphainventions.com

Where is the digital marketing puck going?

Recently, I spoke with a division CEO of a B2B company that earned the majority of its revenue online.  In this conversation, I anticipated that the business would be very savvy on the usage of all digital tools to grab revenue.  The CEO had a background in areas other than marketing so naturally the first set of questions that she prompted turned to how we could grow the business using social media tools (she honed in on Twitter).   Knowing who my audience was for this discussion, here is how I framed my message to inform her about the impacts of digital marketing:

• Map out a long-term prospect and customer contact strategy based on content that is relevant to their needs: Social Marketing is tactic that is to be integrated with other campaigns (email, webinars, podcasts) to drive demand/revenue without over fatiguing or over touching a prospect or customer.   There seems to be too much press excitement and hype around tools like Twitter—those single tools alone are ineffective to drive revenue; the key for success is weaving all these digital tools (Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos) correctly (tagging, linking, etc.) with relevant messaging to maximize the effectiveness of campaigns. A stand alone social media strategy, like a stand along blog that does not link in any way to the business, will not drive revenue or search engine results.

• Blog for revenue impact, not to check the box for the C level audience. Not a surprising observation, but a large percentage of B2B companies do not use a blog or it is relegated to ‘one more activity on the plate’ so it gets little care and feeding.   If a blog has the right content for the right audience, the results in search engine optimization (SEO) will improve which will drive revenue.   The idea is to create and shift the game in blogging to relevant, community based engagement versus the spray and pray broadcast advertising messaging that you might see on Twitter or Twitter combined with blogs.  The right combination of activities of domain naming, blogging, building links off the *relevant* blog,  twitter, linkedin, will drive the right search engine optimization result – the blog drives SEO:  SEO drives revenue into the business.

• Play offense, not defense.  Know where the puck is going, not where the puck has been:   ‘My buyers do not use social media based on a customer survey we just did,’  was the correct assertion of this CEO. You are right, that was how these buyers previously purchased their goods and services.  Yet the puck is moving very quickly in another direction as the importance of word of mouth purchasing increases with new ways to talk about the product of companies.   Forrester sees digital marketing a major driver  in B2B purchasing decisions.    Conversely, let’s look at the same situation from a different view—Domino’s, Amazon, and other B2C companies who are early adopters of digital marketing may have played too much defense on their unique digital media strategy.  Based on this approach, there is a significant REVENUE and brand risk for not playing the game versus playing the game.  In these companies, the CEO is likely now asking the CMO ‘what exactly is our integrated social media strategy?’   This stance is too defensive for a CMO to succeed with the business leaders.

The game is early in digital marketing yet it is a changing and evolving landscape.  Now is a great time to build the right foundation for companies to extend to new revenue channels leveraging digital marketing strategies and tactics.

http://alphainventions.com/

‘Hope’ is not a digital marketing strategy!

Think for a moment of the contrast in the choice of wording in the U.S. Apollo 13 Mission from the Mission Commander in Houston when a crisis hit: “Failure is not an option,” versus choosing another approach: “we hope to return the astronauts back safely.”  One statement is more affirmative and decisive in terms of mindset.  That very decisiveness mindset  is needed now for companies to embrace the change in communicating, acquiring, and working with their customer and prospects with new digital media strategies.

This blog augments earlier themes I mentioned with newer data.  In a recent analysis of social media strategy in this link by B2B online,  the hope strategy is tossed about:  “We are hoping that marketing gets really smart really fast about implementing some of these new media solutions.” The article goes on to say:

• 44% of marketers lack the budgets to implement new media programs
  
• 33% do not have the talent resources to manage new media;
• 32% report limited understanding of new media solutions.

Let’s now talk about some symptoms in a deeper analysis:

• 44% of marketers lack the budgets to implement new media programs:  lack of budget is a symptom of a CMO who makes a decision not to invest here as innovation is not rewarded in this economic environment.  Marketing budgets are flat to decreasing in ‘09 so more attention so far has been being paid to cutting rather than investing.
  

Now let’s talk about root causes–lack of time drives the following behaviors:

• 33% do not have the talent resources to manage new media–companies are not investing in their people to understand this unless they understand it on their own
  
• 32% report limited understanding of new media solutions–lack of time due to other ‘measurable’ priorities by CEOs.
  

CEOs and Boards who are pressing for ‘do more with less’ are not yet rewarding CMOs toward an innovation path.   Couple this with the fact that a large percentage of the CMOs and CEOs are not ‘digital natives’, they are ‘digital immigrants’ so there is not a natural inclination for either party to dig in head first into digital or social media until it is too late…

History repeats itself–when industries miss the curve in terms of change, they tend to get run over by those that embrace change.

Look at what is happening in the industry and who is communicating. Twitter traffic is growing exponentially;  your customers and prospects are engaged in having conversations about your brand and you either participate or you are behind the curve. Word of mouth purchasing is extremely important in both B2B and B2C purchases.

While not every company will aggressively invest in digital and social media, Dell sets an aggressive standard with a 40 person social media team.

Now is the time to be aggressive about implementing a coordinated social media and digital media strategy to drive future revenue.

Translating Digital Marketing language to CEO language – MarketingProfs

I attended a ‘virtual’ conference by MarketingProfs yesterday that was outstanding–12000 others registered as well, likely other marketing attendees.  Of the 8 hour session, there was one very important b2b session that I felt was worth blogging about – not to rehash their content but to offer a translation of the marketing speak  into something your CEO or CFO can get value from.  It was a session that Laura Ramos of Forrester led.

At the end of the day, CEOs and CFOs don’t need to care about ‘marketing campaigns’ or the ‘creative processes or agencies’; what matters to your CEO, GM or CFO is the marketing result relative to the spend, and both ends of that spectrum are getting extra scrutiny in this economic environment. Let’s translate some of the key take aways for you to pitch back to your CEO or CFO.

• Recently approved Marketing budgets decreased 23% year over year in b2b segments according to Laura Ramos of Forrester, so marketing could be viewed as an expense item, a cost center at its worse case.  Within marketing or sales, we may see ourselves/marketing as a revenue driver, but that may not be the perception of your CFO, GM, or CEO.  Time to think like a CEO–time not to be asking for an increase which you’ve likely already figured out.

• Segmentation becomes extremely important in this economic environment for effective campaign investments. Targeting your existing customer base with upsell requires a different approach than targeting net new prospects.  Marketing as a profession becomes community oriented instead of broadcast oriented, so new digital marketing tools enable a measurable, more effective way to reach new communities.

• Most effective revenue drivers (aka demand generation marketing programs): search marketing and direct mail (snail mail still effective!);  according to Forrester, the least effective to drive revenue are executive events and telesales.  Note that there was no clarification on search engine optimization vs. search engine marketing;  my opinion is search engine optimization is the better investment but requires significant internal people resources to pull off.  Heads of sales may have an emotional tie to executive events…

• Of all the tools in digital marketing or marketing in general, social media is the least invested in marketing tool.  This investment is likely due to a variety of factors:  social media itself is least understood, the newness of technology means companies need to experiment, there is a lack of CEO engagement in new technology or experimentation as cutting is rewarded in this economy.  Those that plan now will get ahead when the upturn occurs.  See my previous post on this.

• Often times (non-marketing) CEOs say, ‘let’s build the brand’ (usually with timing it right after a 23% budget cut). Broadcast traditional advertising is decreasing in importance because of cost and lack of measuring (how can you explain to a CFO that broadcast marketing is effective?)    Hence the opportunity for social media–you can drive conversations at a fraction of the cost that are targeted–although the true cost is the internal cycles to create the content to keep this dream alive.  Integrating search engine marketing, email campaigns, and trade shows are most effective in building brands.

I am including a few screen shots from the presentation.  If anyone wants the 40 page deck, please email me jonrusso1@Gmail.com or register at MarketingProfs to receive it.

Leadership and the Final Four

‘Tis the season for college basketball in the United States so let me offer up a US centric parallel  between career leadership principles and what we are seeing in today’s competitive environment within the Final Four in this week’s blog column.

Full disclosure–I earned my undergraduate degree at UConn (a Finance degree with a marketing career–go figure that one out!).  We are lucky – UConn has not one but two teams in this years’ Final Four.   I’ve met the five time NCAA Women’s championship coach Geno Auriemma and have also met two time NCAA Men’s basketball champion Jim Calhoun in a one on one basis.  Jim Calhoun has won 800+ games and is the 8th most winningest coach of all time.  Both are known to be outspoken, direct, and demanding, yet in my brief interaction both were extremely polite and respectful.  Here are 3 observations I can share that I’ve either heard from them directly or have observed of them:

1.  I asked Geno in late 2008 what he attributes his success to at UConn.  His response:  ‘Put yourself on a path of success, you don’t see Phil Jackson (coach of 5 time NBA champions Chicago Bulls and current Lakers coach) coaching the (Los Angeles) Clippers.’ He felt a combination of having the right players and the right staff working in the right environment were the right combinations to drive success and that UConn provided that environment for him.

2.  Play to the level of your own ability/capability, not the ability of your competition–as illustrated by the average margin of victory of this year’s UConn women’s team that is 37-0;  they have won all of their games by AT LEAST a margin of 10 points.  This margin of victory is attributed to Geno who demands the very best performance of his players.

3.  “I have been through a couple of things in my life,” said Jim Calhoun, who has beaten prostate and skin cancer. Mr. Calhoun recently said, “I have learned how to stand up to those (challenges). All I know is go forward, stand up, and be counted.”   As I reflect on what he has experienced with this team, he has fired players over the last two seasons, he has been challenged by purported NCAA violation reports, his team was humiliated by losing to a non-ranked unknown basketball team (or Cinderella team with very good skill set depending on your view) George Mason a few years ago, and he has had successfully battled cancer–all this with his current team he has led to this year’s Final Four.

These two coaches exemplify leaders who demand the most out of their working environment, set high expectations, and exceed those expectations–yet they maintain the balance of being very well respected by former and current players.  I wish them luck as they compete this coming weekend in their quest for another championship title!

Do your customers REALLY use Twitter?

Adage recently published an article that challenged whether the majority of customers were paying attention to Twitter and asserted that marketers should not rush to make judgments based on the minuscule percentage of customers that are actually using Twitter.   The article implies a B2C focus and does not specify if B2B is included in this analysis.

As a B2B CMO, I disagree with the intensity one should pay attention to tools like Twitter for the following reasons:

1.  A CMO’s job is to connect the outside world ideas back to internal reality, and sometime this customer feedback is the direct feedback needed at an executive level;  it is an absolutely critical data point to carefully monitor and critically consider.  Too often the ivory tower approach is taken on service delivery capabilities and a direct customer pipeline of feedback is important to consider and not to discount as ‘one loud customer’ or a ‘disgruntled customer’.  These same customers are sometimes the very seeds of the next generation of innovation.  Twitter provides the forum for CMOs to interact with customers in new and different ways than ever before.

2.  In our current economic environment EVERY CUSTOMER INTERACTION counts as I’ve said before.  Twitter provides an early warning system ahead of the customer calling your CEO to complain or worse yet, the customer abandoning your product and thus cutting your revenue and eventually your job.  Twitter gives an instant feedback mechanism–and when questions go unanswered, the 91% of B2B decision makers according to Forrester that are on the sideline are observing the no response approach in Twitter–and that is crushing in a sales cycle in this environment not to be listening attentively.

3.  CRM companies see the value in Twitter–Salesforce.com has plans to integrate Twitter according to their Cloudforce tour which I attended in NYC last week – according to the product lead from Salesforce.com, this integration is in its very nascent stages but will soon be available via an API that allows trending of information to occur, so every customer instance via Twitter is logged.  So if Salesforce.com sees potential value here to log customer interactions as they occur, so should your company.

While I agree with the premise that not every customer reaction merits an abrupt change in overall marketing strategy, tools like Twitter are absolutely essential to the success of the CMO in connecting the customer experience to the service or product offer.

FEED YOUR NETWORK OFTEN, YOUR NETWORK WILL SOMEDAY FEED YOU!

In the last four weeks, several people (bosses, peers, subordinates, spouse) have made a consistent observation about me as a person that maybe I took for granted -   wow, Jon, you are really tall!  No, the consistent observation is not my height….I’ve had a number of people mention they are amazed with my ability to network and know people outside my inner office confines and inner circle.   Let me explain what led to the perceived success.

Floyd Mayweather, a US champion boxer (39-0), says he trains while his competitors sleep which gives him the winning edge…while my competitors sleep, I network 24×7 on a global basis.  Networking is a full contact sport, not something to dabble in.

LinkedIn, email, Twitter and other tools enable us to network 24×7! Let me provide some ideas on what has helped me network in hopes that you can use these ideas or maybe provide your own to help us both network more effectively.

1. Get out of the house/office/comfort zone:  your next new prospect and your customers that use your product do not sit 5 feet from your office door.    What has helped me meeting others is getting out from behind the desk and get in the faces of others to learn how they see and view the world.  For example, in my last assignment, I had a stint of travel that led me to Orlando-Italy, France, the UK and Connecticut…all in the span of under 3 weeks.    During these travels, I leveraged every moment to bond with others to hear their viewpoint and develop relationships longer term.
2. Help others before asking help for yourself:  in these troubling economic times, as many of us (including me) look for our next career opportunity, the question to ask of (y)our closest contacts (vendors, friends, acquaintances, peers, etc.) is ‘what headache are you suffering right now and who else in my network can help you?’  This exchange of information usually helps them as much as you!  It may also lead to a more productive discussion when you ask for help.
3. Read Positive Books.  Napolean Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’.  This book was written in 1928 near the heart of the Great Depression.  Mr. Hill is likely one of the most quoted books in the nation and I often refer back to his advice to keep positive no matter who you interact with and no matter how they treat you or others.   Harvey McKay’s Dig your well before you are thirsty is also a good read.  Tony Robbins is another fantastic read or listen via YouTube!
4. Become a LinkedIn Fanatic:   a contact of mine helped me get on Fox News on this one–to discuss how productive LinkedIn has been for me (full disclosure–I typically only connect with those I’ve done business with, could do business with, or know–see my profile here)… LinkedIn enables you to network even while you are sleeping!  This tool has changed the game in professional networking.
5. Keeping interested in their interests, not yours:  my life experience base is extremely broad–I’ve built and led teams globally, worked on both US coasts, travelled the globe, worked in commercial and military enviroments—to net it out,  I can talk and relate to nearly anyone I sit with (I challenge you to a drink, dinner or coffee to find something we don’t have in common–if we can’t find something, I’ll buy!)  As an example, I was talking last week in Indiana with a gentleman who’s son plays college basketball for South Carolina Upstate, a small division I school.  I was able to talk sports with him, knew who his son’s teams were playing, yet also talk about specific people that lived in his community that I personally knew–I had only been to Indiana once before in my life!  Networking is about them, not you.

As one walks the tightrope of life as an adult, having a varied network as a safety net certainly helps in these troubling times but also helps in good times.  As I reflect on the value of my own network and in my own job searches over the last decade, I’ve come to the realization that there is no way you can climb the success mountain alone–your network consists of the career sherpas, the consummate coaches willing to give you honest and frank feedback about your abilities, and the support to help you as a team to depart base camp and climb together to the pinnacle of the mountain of success.  Keep feeding your network and it will feed you.

Let’s network…tell me a little about your headaches and maybe I can figure out a way I can help you while I figure out what is next on my career path!

What techniques do you find most effective networking from a career viewpoint?  Let’s figure out how to be the best networker, the championship fighter of networking!