You hand out your business cards like a Vegas blackjack dealer. You've joined every industry association you can think of; you dutifully go to breakfast meet-and-greets, lunch meetings, cocktail schmoozes. You are networking like a fiend, and that's just fine--up to a point. After all, meeting people and making contacts is what business is all about. But how do you get past the "Hello My name is Chris" nametag and on to the good stuff? After you've made that first connection, how do you go on to build and maintain business relationships? We found five entrepreneurs, employees and students who share their secrets of taking networking to the next level. Done properly, it can help you land a contract, get a promotion or simply be more excellent at the job you already have. It can even be fun.
Karen Wright, president of Parachute Executive Coaching, agrees. "I have a personal bias against the word 'networking,' simply because it conjures up images of schmoozing and going to all sorts of random breakfast meetings," she explains. "What I do believe in is investing energy in creating and maintaining a personal community, and doing it in a way that feels appropriate and consistent with who you are."
Community connections
Successful networkers often look beyond their own industry and reach out to their community. For Marisa Farrow, 33, of Thunder Bay, Ont., that means volunteering. Her three-year-old online information service, EventFullCalendars.com, posts details about events going on in Thunder Bay, from fundraisers to business seminars to theatre dates. Volunteering helps her both establish contacts and develop relationships. "It's amazing to be able to network through volunteering, " she says. "Not only are you helping an organization, you're building your own skills and you're making lots of contacts in the community. You get to know so many people." Thunder Bay is a relatively small city--its population hovers around 120 000--so it's not hard for Farrow to move beyond that initial contact and into a more meaningful professional relationship. "It's not like I see a person on a particular committee once or twice and then never again," she explains. "There's a lot of overlap, and you see the same people at different events. That's how you get to know people better, and how they get to know you and what you can do." Farrow has been involved in as many as ten organizations at a time, from sitting on the Thunder Bay tourism advisory committee to helping to organize the Nordic Games when they were held in the city. Even today, after putting EventFullCalendars.com on a one-year hiatus after the birth of her third child, Farrow is still logging the volunteer hours to keep involved.
The friendship factor
The connections you make don't necessarily have to be brand-new ones. Sometimes your most invaluable allies in life--your friends and family--can help you in the work world too. Chanze Gamble, 29, is the senior director of business development for the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) in Toronto. Part of his job is to let people know about the different networking programs and scholarships the CCAB has to offer, and to establish links between the aboriginal community and corporate Canada. He's discovered that keeping in touch with hometown buddies and high school and university friends pays off not only personally, but professionally as well. "A friend of mine back home in Saskatchewan is a bank manager. When I was at home I met the bank president, CEO and chairman just by accompanying my friend to a staff dinner and volunteering at the bank's booth at trade shows," says Gamble. "So now rather than making a cold call, I can call up this bank president and tell him about what I'm working on now." Other relationships come into play as well. "I've maintained relationships with some of the people I met at high school. One's now a prominent financier, so when I have an idea about a project or someone comes to me with an idea, I can call him and say 'hey, can I shoot this business plan over to you? Let me know what you think.' "

Calling all alumni
Clearly, the art of making connections can start way before you're in the workplace. "You need to reconnect with people you've had good relationships with," says Wright. "If you're looking for a job, for instance, don't be afraid to call and make a reasonable and specific request: 'Hi, it's Suzanne Ng. Just wanted to let you know I'm looking for a job in the area of marketing for a not-for-profit organization. What I'm doing is contacting people who know me and are asking for either words of advice, or suggestions of one or two people I might contact to help me work towards this goal.' Get specific; don't just say 'hey, do you know anyone?' And give them a choice--advice or a contact."
Richard Windross is gathering both advice and contacts, even before he sets foot in an office. Windross, 22, is a fourth-year business administration student at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, NS. He's also the president of SALUTE (Students and Alumni Linking University Towards Excellence), an on-campus organization that brings students and alumni together. "One of the selling points of SALUTE is that it's the perfect networking opportunity," he says. "Take homecoming weekend. We're hosting an alumni awards dinner and dance. There will be 300 alumni and 12 members of SALUTE, mingling and acting as student representatives. You can practise your networking skills, and you learn not to be afraid to go up and start talking to people."
Windross is moving beyond his university walls in other ways too. His activities take him to university conferences outside of Nova Scotia, where he meets other students and more St. FX alumni, and into the community, through a mentoring program called SAINT (Students and Alumni In Touch).
The networking equation
As Farrow, Gamble and Windross discovered, networking is often a gradual process. Introducing yourself to person A doesn't necessarily guarantee Job B two weeks later. But the relationship ripple effect can take you in new directions. Kerry Breeze, 30, is a book publicist for The Dundurn Group, a publishing company. She had been a member of the Book Publishers' Professional Association (BPPA) for a year when a co-worker invited her to join the BPPA Cabaret, a song and dance night where industry insiders and events are satirized. "I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act. But joining the Cabaret was one of my best networking moves!" she laughs. "I met lots of people, and people in the publishing industry still recognize me because of the character I played. It's also how I got this job--it wan't advertised, but someone in the show suggested my name and let me know there was an opening."
The contacts she made continue to evolve. A colleague and friend she met at the Cabaret had done some freelance work with an author, and when the author who trying to sell his book to a publisher, her friend suggested Breeze's company, which did end up publishing the book. The author is also the host of a local cable show about films, and last spring when Breeze was drumming up publicity for a fiction book about a movie star in Hong Kong, she called the host and he booked her author on the show--a real coup. "It's hard to get television coverage for a fiction book, and this show doesn't traditionally feature books," she says. "That's a great example of networking that went quite far."
Opportunities show up in unexpected places too. "I know someone who used to be a waitress. Some of her regular customers worked for a publishing house, and she mentioned to them that she was looking to get out of waitressing and into communications," says Breeze. "They told her she'd be great at publicity and she should apply at their company. She got the job."
In the end, building a business relationship means remembering it's a relationship: you gotta work at it. Simply showing up isn't going to do it. "Don't just go to cocktail parties!" insists Wright. "There isn't a whole lot of time and space for that in the world anymore. Be truly interested in the person in the person that you're speaking with or the event you're involved in--it shows, and you're able to create a connection."