Blog · Planning
Planning Your Networking
A dream without a plan is just a fantasy. The same is true here: almost everyone knows they should cultivate relationships, almost no one has written down anywhere when. And whatever isn't on the calendar doesn't happen.
Published 11 November 2021 · revised 16 August 2026
Where to start
Two questions, before the calendar
Who's the customer you need?
Every market calls for a different way of networking. If you're not sure which one is yours, look at the customers you've already had: what sector they were in, how long they've been around, businesses or individuals. The better you can describe them, the more likely you are to recognise them when you meet them.
Where do you meet them?
Almost never at the typical industry event. If you're looking for small-business owners, you'll find them at chambers of commerce and trade associations; if you're looking for individuals, it pays to use the network you already have and go where they are — even outside the business world.
Then the calendar
A network isn't maintained on inspiration. It's maintained with a fixed number of meetings a week, put on the calendar like any other commitment you've decided to honour.
It's the boring part, and it's the only thing that separates people who get referrals from people who wait for them.
One word at a time
There is no such thing as a potentially infinite network
The 2021 article opened with that image — every person introduces others, and so on, endlessly. It's the reasoning that makes planning impossible, because it removes any limit to start from.
The real limit
A person maintains stable relationships with about a hundred and fifty people: that's Dunbar's number, and no amount of good will gets around it. Above that threshold, contacts stay names in an address book.
Knowing you have a ceiling is what makes a plan possible: you stop expanding and start choosing.
What can actually be multiplied
Not the number of people you know: the number of useful combinations among the people who know you. It's the work that, in the discipline, the calculation performs on top of the Relational Footprint, and that produces a match.
And there's a law that says where the leverage is: activating a person is addition, activating an organisation is multiplication — provided someone inside the organisation is designated to receive it (Fourth Law). In a company, that someone is the Referral Director, who is also the person keeping the calendar mentioned above.
You don't plan an infinite network. You plan the next five conversations.
The first step
Where your company stands, in one number
AIRA-SCAN© measures the relational capital your company already has: ten questions, three minutes, no registration. Your browser calculates the score and shows it immediately, along with the areas where you're losing the most points.
The extended report then arrives by email, and within one working day a person calls you: you look at the result together and assess whether the AIRA-DX© Stoic Analysis makes sense for your company. It's free and limited to twelve a week, so it isn't owed to anyone who does the check-up: it's decided together.
Would you rather just talk about it? The number is 0549 888808.