In the last article I wrote, I slightly mentioned a networking principle called the law of 250. I don’t know if you have done a little research on it, but the law of 250 provides the answer to any excuses by people that the they do not know enough people to be able to network. Remember the definition of Networking?
“Networking is making links from people we know to people they know, in an organized way, for a specific purpose, while remaining committed to doing our part, expecting nothing in return.” – Donna Fisher and Sandy Vilas, Power Networking
Like we said earlier, networking is powerful and it requires setting goals, analysing the kind of help you will need, developing the necessary skills and going ahead to build the network. However many people usually complain that they don’t know sufficient people to build a good network. The Law of 250 however disproves this.
The Law of 250 says that everybody knows 250 people directly. These includes neigbhours, friends, former classmates, colleagues, relatives, teamates, religious associations, people you socialize with, professional associations, people who provide services to you e.t.c. This law states that these 250 people also have 250 people that they know directly. This means that on your second layer of relationships there are 62,500 people.
These 62,500 also know 250 people each, this comes to over 15,000,000, by the time you look at the 4 level, the entire population of the world is virtually covered, this shows proves the point that you are actually 4 people away from the farthest person from you in the world. No matter who you are, you know someone who knows someone, who knows someone who can link you to whoever. You are not that far away from the link that will give you access to what you need.
After you understand this law and are willing to utilize it to your advantage, the next thing that you do is to develop a networking log. This will include the person’s contact name, address, occupation, how you met, outstanding point about the contact, date last contacted, names of 3 referrals, date of follow up of these 3 referrals, date of thank you note and any other relevant information.
Networking is a concious activity, don’t let it bother you that you need to do quite a number of things. It is unfortunate that there is no course that handles this topic in our schools, but its a much more vital skill than technical competence in the real world.
Start networking today, and inevitably we’ll meet at the top.
