Make Your Contacts Count: Networking Know-How for Business and Career Success

I just finished reading "Make Your Contacts Count, Networking Know-How for Business and Career Success," by Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon and it is a must-read for anyone who wants to be successful in the business world. "Contacts Count," gives you all the tools you need in an easy-to-use manner to get out there and become successful in the business networking arena. I have already started using some of the techniques that Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon share in their book and I am finding that it is easier to describe my business and my value to others. If you keep showing up to business networking events and leaving empty-handed and non-connected, buy this book, read it and start implementing the many practical ways to connect with others, build lasting business and personal relationships and watch your business grow!

I just loved this book. I regularly read business books on business plans, marketing plans, and publicity or public relations plans. I really hadn't thought about it before, but after reading this book any entrepreneur should have a networking plan, too. "Networking is now the critical strategy for business development. Professionals and entrepreneurs need to know how to gain visibility and credibility in their target markets, and how to build and maintain relationships for long-term growth." (Barber, page xiii). I agree 100% with the authors! And this book is the book to help you put together your networking plan. It is broken into the four following parts to help you in the process: I. Survey your skills and mindset (Chapters 1-2) II. Set your strategy (Chapters 3-5) III. Sharpen your skills (Chapters 6-13) IV. Select your settings (Chapters 14-20) The chapters included in the book are as follows: 1. Assess your skills 2. Change your mindset 3. Teach trust 4. Develop your relationships 5. Go with your goals 6. Know the "netiquette" 7. Avoid the top 20 turnoffs 8. "Who are you?" 9. "What do you do?" 10. "What are we going to talk about?" 11. Make conversations flow 12. End with the future in mind 13. Follow through 14. Network at work 15. Make it rain clients 16. (Net)work from home 17. Make the most of your memberships 18. Rev up referral groups 19. Connect at conventions 20. Jump-start your job hunt My favorite chapters were 7, 14, 15, 16, and 17. But all the chapters are great. There really are no spare words included in this text. And that is one of the reasons I liked it so much. Very well written. 5 stars!

I loved Make Your Contacts Count. Even if you don't think you need networking skills for your work, trust me, you'll get a lot out of this book. It is filled with specific, lively examples that spark your imagination and build your confidence that you too can be a great conversationalist. I also like that it's based in values of trust and mutual respect. Excellent resource.

As a career and life planning coach, I have refered hundreds of clients to the business books written by Baber and Waymon. Make Your Contacts Count is their latest book about building business relationships through strategic networking. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to stay employed and/or maximize his/her professional contributions. The authors make the important point that building professional relationships can not be left to chance because the quality of our business relationships directly relates to employability, career advancement and overall professional success. The premise of the book is networking efforts must be ongoing and planned, but for many the thought of having to talk with strangers, pitch a product or service, or even answer the envitable "What do you do?" is difficult. This book anticipates people's fears and resistance and helps the reader to explore ways to comfortably begin to increase visability and impact inside and outside their organizations.The layout of Make Your Contacts Count is engaging and interactive. It is easy to skim and bold faced "tips" highlight many pages. This is a "how-to" style reference book that will stand the test of time, buy it as an investment in your future.

This book's a "keeper." It's so good, I use it for prizes in my classes--in Marketing, in Teaching Adults, in Information Technology, and in Organization Development/Human Resources. As we change with the business environment this century, people--contacts--are our primary resources, support systems, and the source of much of the value with which we transact.In Marketing, it crowns the experience I call "The Nifty Business Card Contest" (it's fitting). In Teaching Adults, it conveys the basic skills that should be included in a broad variety of today's--and tomorrow's--learning experiences and in "double loop" learning activities that bring the learner to truly capitalize on experience. In Information Technology, it helps readers extend and make useful their human networks--a skill not much taught in IT courses. Finally, in Organization Development, it provides a big dose of strategies, skills, approaches and techniques that are so important in organizations and for people undergoing change.Waymon and Baber have obviously recollected their experiences well--and translated them into thoroughly useful words of guidance for readers wanting to begin or to vastly improve their networking activities. They provide examples of what to say in stressful or uncomfortable situations, how to handle a received business card and "trigger" a request for your own, and how to organize and follow up occasions where you meet people.Perhaps the most useful information relates to how to preplan for situations in which you are to meet people--how to select and to craft your agenda and to work for its fulfillment in the people you meet. It is obvious that the greatest talents in communication and perceptivity are at play here--and those of us whose idea of networking is "Hi! I'll call you sometime" will be greatly appreciative both of the depth this book brings to the process and of the practical guidance and checklists it provides.It is a credit to the craft of writing the authors have mastered that you can read this book from front to back, back to front, or skip around with equal pleasure and a high degree of derived value. Readers who pick this book up will almost certainly be better networkers when they put it down, whether they read a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter or the entire book. This review would be longer, but I have to go meet a few people now.