Product Description

Make Your Contacts Count is a practical, step-by-step guide for creating, cultivating, and capitalizing on networking relationships and opportunities. Packed with valuable tools, the book offers a field-tested "Hello to Goodbye" system that takes readers from entering a room, to making conversations flow, to following up. Updated from its first edition, the book now includes expanded advice on building social capital at work and in job hunting, as well as new case studies, examples, checklists, and questionnaires. Readers will discover how to:

* draft a networking plan
* cultivate current contacts
* make the most of memberships
* effectively exchange business cards
* avoid the top ten networking turn-offs
* share anecdotes that convey character and competence
* transform their careers with a networking makeover

Job-seekers, career-changers, entrepreneurs, and others will find all the networking help they need to supercharge their careers and boost their bottom lines.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31676 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780814474020
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Every executive who is really committed to being proactive in managing their career should start with this networking book." -- Exective Insider Newsletter: ExecuNet

“Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon have been teaching, preaching and writing books about networking for fifteen years. Their book, Make Your Contacts Count, is without a doubt the Networking Manifesto.”

-Executive Insider e-Newsletter

“If you’re feeling shy about cultivating and capitalizing on the people you know, or have no clue what networking is, pick up this book for a boost of self-confidence and the goods on networking.”

-Retail News Magazine

Review

“Make Your Contacts Count will help make networking more enjoyable and productive for you.”

-Office Pro magazine

If you’re feeling shy about cultivating and capitalizing on the people you know... pick up this book.”

-Retail News magazine

"...This model will help you create a fully developed network and help you make networking an art, not an accident.”

-SuccessNet from BNI

“ Make Your Contacts Count is without a doubt the Networking Manifesto.”

-Executive Insider e-Newsletter

“Follow these tips and the people you talk to should be able to see the big picture of who you are and what you can contribute.”

Workplace 911, national workplace columnist Bob Rosner

About the Author
Anne Baber (Lenexa, KS) and Lynne Waymon (Silver Spring, MD) lead Contacts Count, a consulting and training firm for business and career networking. Their previous books include the first edition of Make Your Contacts Count, and How to Fireproof Your Career.

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Customer Reviews

A cookbook for entrepreneurs to use when creating their networking plan for business development!

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!

Excellent, Straightforward Book on Networking
I just lost my job at a high tech company in Silicon Valley and decided to start networking right away. After reading the first 25 pages of the book, I implemented some of the points Baber mentioned and it was amazing. If every young high school person read and digested the info in this book, he or she would have a competitive advantage over their competition. The info would help them through college and throughout their careers. I love the no-nonsense approach to networking that's conveyed in this book (I've now read the entire book, but will keep it as a reference book).

One of the Best Books Written on Networking
I have been teaching high end professionals (lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, etc.) how to network for many years. As a result, I read almost anything that comes out on this subject. And, then I review the best of the best here on Amazon.

Authors Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon are obvious experts on this subject and communicate their expertise in a well written, very straightforward basis. I love that they start by emphasizing the importance of a networking strategy before diving into the details of tactics. And, I really like that they spend time on the importance of building trust in all networking activities.

Heretofore, my favorites on this subject have been "Click" by George Frasier as to strategy (his concept of "connecting" takes networking to an higher level); and "The Little Teal Book of Trust" by Jeffrey Gittomer. This book does an even better job than the two of those on a myriad of very important tactical issues.

As much as I liked this book (and I do highly recommend it), the absence of treatment of net based social networking seems to be a real oversight. Unless I missed it, the great online networking tool, LinkedIn, is not even mentioned. For a book this recent and one that has chosen "social networks" as one of the things for which it is indexed in the Library of Congress, this oversight keeps me from ranking it as a five star on this subject.

That being said, I do recommend the book highly...just supplement it with a good book on the role of social networking, and especially on LinkedIn. On networking tactics, other than online, this is as good as it gets.