Are your networking efforts productive? When you have time to network, how do you spend it? Who do you spend it with? Where do you go? Do you ever ask yourself these types of questions?

If you want your networking efforts to be productive it's important to continually ask yourself these questions. You'll still need to be patient and allow time for your efforts to pay off, but that doesn't mean you can't regularly evaluate your progress and look for ways to improve.

What I have found from my own efforts is that in the beginning you need to spend a lot of time growing your network. You attend lots of events, you meet lots of people and you have a ton of one on one meetings. Eventually though this strategy loses effectiveness because there's much more value in taking care of the important part of your current network, your inner circle, than there is in continuing to grow and grow and grow the number of people that you know.

If you're networking effectively, for every event that you attend you spend at least that much time again meeting with and following-up with people you met or reconnected with at that event. Preferably more. That's a lot of work, and at some point that time investment will have a much better return if it's invested in the people in your life who are already proven assets.

Now, instead of just thinking of networking in terms of the events you attend think about who has made and is making the biggest difference for you. Who helps you get real results whether that be referrals or knowledge or something else that is valuable to you? Typically this is a relatively short list. Do you spend enough time with the people on that list?

For most people, myself included, the answer is no. These people should make up your inner circle and I would guess that investing more time with them and finding ways to add value for them will be far more productive and valuable than attending yet another networking event and working through all of the subsequent follow-up. This statement assumes that you've built enough of a network to have a definable inner circle.

Of course I'm not suggesting that you never attend networking events. Even after you've developed a strong inner circle they still have great value. In fact I'm looking forward to at least 1 really solid event this week. Just consider how you're allocating the time you spend on developing relationships, and how you can make the best use of that time.

Happy Networking!