How to Create a Networking Action Plan

All the best business strategies have a plan or a strategy. So why should you treat your own personal career development any differently?

Creating a networking plan of action is one way to help maximise your success when it comes to meeting other professionals in your industry, improving your reputation and making connections that will be really beneficial to your job success. It might feel strange to be approaching something like networking with a structured process, when it’s typically an activity that consists of friendly conversation. But if you’re looking to make the most out of industry events and opportunities to mingle with other MICE professionals, a professional networking plan can help to ensure that you leave every networking situation feeling accomplished.

In this article, we share the benefits of setting networking goals and developing a strategy, and talk you through what you need to include when you create a networking action plan.

A networking plan is a strategy that has been developed to provide structure, focus and goals to someone’s approach to networking. It helps to give direction when you’re in networking situations and can be part of a wider personal development or career growth plan.

Some people find networking daunting, or can find that they come out of networking situations feeling like they haven’t really achieved anything or spent the whole time talking to the wrong people. A networking plan can not only provide a purpose that helps to increase confidence, but it also ensures that you’re getting the most out of networking events or encounters by establishing a strategy to follow and potentially setting up goals to achieve as well.

There’s no standard format for a networking plan, so you can create one based on the things that feel important to your aspirations. However, most networking plans contain goals or intentions, specific networking targets, and a way of measuring success.

You can read our full guide on how to network effectively on our blog.

Before we dive into how to develop a personal networking plan, we’re first going to talk through some of the benefits of having one.

One of the best things about having a networking plan of action is that it gives you specific objectives for when you’re networking. This is an advantage because you enter professional situations knowing what you are trying to achieve, which tends to make your interactions much more efficient and successful. You can also prepare yourself better for the networking event because you’ve already made a plan, which will help you feel calmer and more confident, which in turn will benefit how you come across.

Something that can slow networking down and mean that you get less out of professional interactions is having to make small talk at the start of a conversation and struggling to try and find common ground that you can then have a productive conversation about. With a networking strategy plan, you enter into conversations knowing what you want to talk about, so you can prepare what you’re going to say and get to the point faster, helping to ensure that you achieve your intention.

Whilst small talk and casual conversation can be a very enjoyable part of networking that can help to foster better connections, the last thing you want is to lose momentum by getting stuck networking with people you don’t have anything in common with or end up in a conversation that isn’t serving a useful purpose.

A benefit of a networking action plan is that it can make networking conversations much more efficient because you know what you’re there to achieve and so can tailor everything you say and do to this goal. At large professional events where you have a lot of people to speak with, this is essential in making sure that you get what you want from the opportunity.

Creating a professional networking plan in advance of an event can help you to feel more confident during networking because you have a plan and know what you’re there to achieve, which can take some of the pressure off. Not only can this mean that you enjoy the networking opportunity a lot more, but it also means that you’re likely to make a better impression, which will likely lead to greater success whatever your goals are.

A key part of having a professional development and networking plan is deciding how you’re going to define your success and then how you’re going to measure this. This is an advantage because it makes it easy to monitor your progress with networking, helping to identify areas where your plan could improve and helping to refine your approach. You can also track and see how you’re improving and working towards your goals, which provides good motivation and an incentive to keep going!

You might create a networking action plan as part of personal development activities, or you might decide to come up with a formal strategy for a specific professional event. Depending on your networking goals, you can tailor and design your plan to suit a particular purpose.

Below, we’ve highlighted some of the key things that you might want to include in a networking strategy.

One of the most important things that every networking plan should include is an intention or objective. This will be linked to your goals, but should be an overarching achievement that you are working towards with all of your networking activities. You should decide on your intention first, before tackling anything else in the plan.

A networking intention is a general aim or result that should guide all the other aspects of your plan and also provide direction for what to say and do when you’re networking. It’s different from a goal because it won’t be as specific and is more of a general guiding principle.

Examples of intentions for networking might include speaking to new people, gaining more confidence, increasing recognition of your name and face in an industry sector, or sharing your ideas or business concepts with more people. You can set specific goals that will align with this intention, but the intention provides you with a core motivation for all kinds of networking.

The most impactful intentions are ones that relate to a core passion or professional aspiration, because if you’re emotionally committed to a particular outcome, you’ll be more motivated to reach it. The benefit of setting an intention, especially one with an emotional angle, is that you’re not just working towards targets, you’ve also got something meaningful undercutting your whole plan.

Once you’ve got an intention, the next stage of creating an action plan is to decide what your goals of networking will be. These goals should help you work towards or achieve your intention, and you might add to them over time.

The best networking goals are specific and measurable, which means getting very granular about what it is that you want to achieve. Examples of goals include things like the number of people you want to talk to, the number of LinkedIn connections you want to make, potential job or progression opportunities, or follow-up messages about ideas or projects that you talked about.

It can be really useful to set event-specific networking goals if you have particular occasions coming up when you know networking will be involved, whether this is for a formal event or just a business opportunity that you want to make the most of. You can add these individual goals to your personal networking plan and may also set out to achieve some of your general goals as well.

Your networking action plan can and should be tailored to what’s going to work best for you, which means that your goals might change over time. There should also be an element of review in your networking goals, meaning that you acknowledge whether they have been achieved and decide if you want to adapt them or choose another goal instead.

A lot of the success of networking is talking to the right people. Therefore, a good networking plan should include target connections you want to make sure you speak with, whether that’s in-person or online.

Deciding on who you most want to network with shouldn’t be the foundation of your networking plan, as there is often a lot of value to be found in unexpected connections, and it’s also difficult to know who is going to be at particular events and then ensure that you actually manage to speak to them. But if networking with someone from a particular sector or business is linked to one of your goals, it can be really useful to highlight this individual in your plan and decide on the best way to speak with them.

Of course, a great way to network successfully is to find out where your target connections are going to be, contact them beforehand and make a plan to meet. This outreach might be a key part of your professional networking plan, involving drafting and tweaking messages and sourcing contact details.

Alternatively, you might just research who is going to be at particular events and make a list of the people you want to talk to most. If you have mutual connections in common then this can be a good way to get an introduction, but your plan might just be to find and approach them in person and start a conversation.

Specific networking targets might not be a major part of your plan and goals, but speaking to and getting to know the right people can be really impactful for certain professionals. As you continue to build out your network, your list of targets might change and shrink over time, but it can be a really useful part of creating a plan for professionals who want to become more established in their industry.

Networking can be done effectively both online and in person. Whichever approach you choose, you’ll want to give yourself a schedule for this to make sure that you’re aware of events coming up and also have deadlines to hold yourself accountable.

If your networking action plan involves in-person events, make sure that these are highlighted in your schedule and then block out time to prepare for each of these at least a week in advance. If you identify large gaps in your schedule where you don’t have any networking opportunities, it’s a good idea to research potential events and consider buying a ticket.

If achieving your goals of networking involves digital outreach and interaction, block out time when you’re going to do this instead of assuming that you’ll get around to it organically. Link your goals to a timeframe to maximise productivity, such as aiming to message five new people on a designated day each week.

As we’ve already touched on, setting specific targets and goals gives you the opportunity to measure how successful you’ve been in achieving them. As part of creating a professional networking plan, you should define the success metrics that you’re going to use to chart your performance.

Examples of these metrics include the number of LinkedIn connections you make, the number of new people you talk to, the number of contact details you collect or even the number of follow-up messages that you receive. Similar to, and likely linked to your overall intention, you want to decide how you’re going to measure success right at the start of your networking strategy so that you know what you’re aiming for.

The final stage of making a plan for effective business networking is to make sure that you’re measuring and reflecting on your progress. If you’re not hitting your goals, investigate your approach and try something different to see if you get different results. If you’re feeling relatively successful, try and pinpoint where this success is coming from and use this knowledge to refine your approach.

You might chart your progress officially as part of your plan, setting time-based targets and then ticking these off when they are met, or might just use your defined success metrics to monitor how you’re doing more casually. Having a regular check-in about how you’re doing with your networking goals can be a great way to stay focused and motivated, as well as allow yourself to feel positive about what you’ve achieved.

A networking action plan can be a really useful tool no matter what stage of your career you are. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’ve spent an event talking to the wrong people or wishing you’d had a more direct approach when meeting other professionals in your sector. A personal networking plan can be a massive help not only to get the most out of events, but also to help boost your career and future job opportunities.

For more advice on effective networking and getting the most out of events, take a look at the other articles on our blog.

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