The 10 Secrets of a Master Networker

However, it turned out that McKenna liked the precocious adolescent -- especially because of the way young Keith had come to his attention. McKenna was on the board of a local prep school where he sent his own children, by reputation one of the best schools in the country. Strings were indeed pulled, and Keith entered a new world, on scholarship, that set him on an entirely new course, just as his father had hoped. "I got one of the best educations America has to offer," Ferrazzi says today. "Starting with elementary school, prep school, on to Yale and Harvard -- it would never have happened if my father hadn't believed that it never hurts to ask. The worst anyone can say is no. Not many people believe that. Embarrassment and fear are debilitating."

Totally fearless is how Joshua Ramo, an editor at Time Inc., describes Ferrazzi. Ramo remembers a moment at the Davos economic forum, where the two first met, when Ferrazzi walked onto a hotel bus, saw Nike founder Phil Knight, and made a beeline for the seat next to his.

Boldness, and its particular genius, was the father's gift to his son.

Rule 8: Don't keep score.
Successful networking is never about simply getting what you want. It's about getting what you want and making sure that people who are important to you get what they want, too. Often, that means fixing up people with one another. Take, for instance, this unsolicited E-mail message that Ferrazzi sent to two key executives in digital gaming:

Steve and John,

I wanted to introduce the two of you. John, I've bragged about Steve to you already. And Steve, John is the president and COO of EA [Entertainment Arts], the largest games company in the world. John has been an outspoken believer that the future of games will converge with ITV and that EA is the kind of company that will be at the forefront given the leadership of someone like John, the size of EA, and power of their content. I know, Steve, that you get the power of games as the one who allowed G4 to come to life. It would seem that the two of you would benefit from some conversations about your mutual visions. Not to mention that I suspect that you'll really like each other as well.

Best,

Keith Ferrazzi

"It's about a personal connection that makes you feel a sense of reciprocity," Ferrazzi says. "Superficiality is not networking. There are people who have lots of superficial connections, and people call that networking. But that's not successful. You feel dirty when you talk to someone like that. The outcome of good networking is the capacity to have a conversation with anyone you want to have a conversation with and then to leave that conversation with a lasting connection of some sort."

The best sort of networking occurs when Ferrazzi can connect two people who don't know each other. Which drives home a surprising implication: the strength of your network derives as much from the diversity of your relationships as it does from their quality or quantity. Most of us know the people within our own profession and social group, and little more. Ferrazzi makes a point of knowing as many people from as many different worlds as possible. The ability to bridge those worlds is a key attribute in managers who are paid better and promoted faster, according to an influential study conducted by Ron Burt, a professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

The care and feeding of contacts is a relatively new concept for the business networker. In Power! How to Get It, How to Use It, a 1975 self-help screed on the secrets to becoming a corporate chieftain, Michael Korda advised that "masters players ... attempt to channel as much information as they can into their own hands, then withhold it from as many people as possible." That is, 30 years ago old-style connectors attained power through a monopoly of information, whereas today people like Ferrazzi view the system as social arbitrage, a constant and open exchange of favors and intelligence. It's a sort of career karma, too; how much you give to the network determines how much you'll receive.

Rule 9: Ping constantly.
Eighty percent of success, Woody Allen once said, is just showing up. Eighty percent of networking is just staying in touch. Ferrazzi calls it "pinging." It's a quick, casual greeting. He makes hundreds of phone calls a day. Most of them are simply quick hellos that he leaves on friends' voice mail. He sends E-mail constantly. He remembers birthdays and makes a special point of reaching people when they have one. When it comes to relationship maintenance, he is, in the words of more than one friend, "the most relentless, energetic person I know."

Rule 10: Find anchor tenants. Feed them.
By now, an invitation for an evening at Ferrazzi's is a hot ticket. Nearly once a month influence peddlers from different worlds gather to gossip, talk business, and schmooze at his Hollywood Hills home. But in the early days, before his dinner parties had cachet, Ferrazzi had to develop a very deliberate strategy for attracting the right people.

 PREV  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7  NEXT