People Networking Skills - Andy Lopata

Networking - Discussion between Michael Beale and Andy Lopata, October 2007.

Andy Lopata, former Managing Director of BRE Networking, one of the UK's largest referral focussed networking companies, has lived and breathed business-to-business networking for over seven years. He discusses what networking to him, where and when he networks and what he considers to be some of capabilities and beliefs of effective networkers.

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Michael : Good morning Andy. Firstly I’d really like to thank you for taking part in this conversation. Can I ask you to start of by introducing yourself? Say a little bit about yourself, a little bit about what you do.

Andy : Yes, absolutely. Good morning Michael. I’m Andy Lopata, I am a business networking strategist, which means that I work with large companies on how they can use networking tools to solve problems within their business. I’m also a director of an online-based referral focused networked which is just in the process of launching which is called Word of Mouse, and I’m involved with advising and supporting a number of other business networks.

Previously I was managing director Business Referral Exchanging, which is a national referral focused network – and I’ve also written two books on networking including ‘And Death Came Third’ which came number two on Amazon.

Michael : Excellent. What does networking actually mean to you? Can you give us a sort of definition?

Andy : Absolutely. Can I answer that first of all, it’s going to sound terribly politician-like of me, by saying what networking isn’t.

There seems to be a misconception of networking as a group of desperate business men running around exchanging business cards and desperately thrusting contacts under each others noses. Alternatively other people see networking as a bit of the old school tile, a bit of a hand shake you make, and something really to steer clear of because it represents everything that’s wrong in business. Networking in fact is neither of the above.

For me networking is the process of sharing expertise, experiences, ideas, and resources with other people so that we can achieve more together than we could possibly do on our own. And exchanging business contacts is part of that, but for many people networking is as much about peer groups and support, mentoring, sharing ideas, not reinventing the wheel – as it is about getting sales.

Michael : And where and when do you network?

Andy : Well again, there are two side to that answer – you network potentially all the time. You have networking organisations where you can go to breakfast meetings, lunch meetings, dinner meetings, people have even spoken of a twenty four hour work-athon, where you don’t even have to go home – so there are plenty of opportunities for networking events. And with the growth of online business and social networks there’s even more opportunity to network 24-7. But that’s not networking per say, that’s merely people facilitating the process. You’re networking all of the time, whenever you speak to your neighbours and you find out what’s happening down the road, whenever you arrange for somebody else to pick up your children from the school run, you’re networking.

I recently went over to Paris for the weekend, and with travel difficulties thirty of us were stranded – together we found out what was going on and together we managed to overcome the problem, that was networking.

Michael : Being a little bit more specific – If I was a newbie networker, and I was going to my first meeting – what would you ask me to do? What would you ask me to pay attention to?

Andy : Well the first thing I’d suggest is that you ask yourself why you’re going in the first place. Too many people go to networking events because someone has invited them, and said it would be a good idea. First thing is to work out what your goals are in business, what you’re trying to achieve. And then ask yourself ‘well how can networking help me achieve those goals?’ and then ‘which networking events are appropriate? And will help me do that?’ So go with a very fixed idea in mind of what you can achieve and why you’re going.

Michael : Can you give us an idea of what sort of objectives you might go for?

Andy : Absolutely, the obvious one, and the prime one for most business people tends to be new business, and generating sales. Beyond that you’ve got peer group support which I’ve just mentioned and mentoring – improving inter-personal skills and presentation skills depending on the type of network. Improving confidence generally. You have finding suppliers, it’s amazing how few people think about that. We don’t want to go to Yellow Pages, or Google for our suppliers, if we can help it we’d rather be recommended. The wider your network, the easier that is to achieve.

And also a very important one for a lot of people is raising their profile. We all know the phrase ‘it’s not what you know it’s who you know’ but it’s also important to remember it’s ‘who knows you’ so the more events you go to, the more people talk about you in a positive light, and remember that people are more inclined to talk about you in a negative then a positive light, so you have to do something to reverse that. The more you can do that the better.

Michael : Talking that through, say you actually were looking for new business, and you went to a networking meeting – what sort of things do you want to do there to meet that objective, but without upsetting people?

Andy : Ok, well the first thing I think, is making sure that you’ve selected the right event, and what the aim of that is.

So for example, I would split business networks into three main categories – and there’s a lot of overlap between these, but you can normally find the main reason.

Those are what I’d call Profile Building Networks, events like a chamber of commerce perhaps, online organisations like Ecademy where it’s about building up numbers. Events which are brain building, where there’s a speaker and you’ve gone to hear from the speaker – for example, I’m a member of the Professional Speakers Organisation, that’s a network that’s there for self development, rather than just sales. Then you’ve got the referral focused networks, like the weekly breakfast meetings, like our new business Word-of-Mouse.

So know which one you’re at. If you go to a profile building event – I was at one last night – you’re not going to run around and start jumping on people for business. What you can do is start building up relationships, start building up synergy, but if you see and opportunity, and it feels alright to do so – then do so! I was talking to a solicitor last night, and I was asking his advice on solicitors as potential customers of mine and he mentioned that his firm suffered from the sort of problems that my company could help deal with – where they have staff coming through that need to go out and generate new business and network, and they’re not confident walking into a room full of strangers, they talk to each other – and so I said at that point ‘well if I can be of any help to your firm let me know’ now that’s not pushing myself on anyone, the door was open and I’d be crazy to walk away from that.

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