An event is a first meeting, not a result

I used to come home from events with a stack of cards and a good feeling, and a month later have nothing to show for either.

The mistake was treating the event as the result. An event, a coffee, a first call: each is a first meeting. Whether it becomes a relationship is decided afterwards, by two things. Do they remember you? Did you do what you said?

Here is the routine I use now. It has three parts and none of them takes long.

Before: decide who, not how many

• Pick three to five people, or kinds of people, you want to meet, and write one line on why each matters to you.
• If the attendee list or speaker list is public, look at it once. You are not building a dossier. You are deciding where to stand.
• Decide what you can offer: an intro, something you have learned, a useful link. You will need it in the next step.

During: leave every good conversation with a reason to talk again

• The best reason is a small promise you can keep: "I'll introduce you to Sam", "I'll send you the template I use", "I'll find out and tell you".
• Say it out loud and say when: "I'll send it tomorrow." It sets the expectation and makes you more likely to do it.
• If there is no natural promise, ask a question you would genuinely like the answer to later. "How did the launch go?" is a fine next message in three weeks.
• Not every conversation needs a next step. Being honest about that is part of the routine, not a failure of it.

After: write it down the same day, send it the next

• Same day, for each person: who they are, where you met, what they care about, and what you promised. Three lines is enough (next week's post is about doing this in under a minute).
• Next day: send what you promised (the post after that is about the follow-up itself).
• Put a date on the next touch. If there is no date, there is no next touch.

What this does not do. It will not turn a crowded room into a pipeline by itself. It makes sure the conversations that were worth having are not lost to a busy week.

How I do it. I use CirqleSync, which I build: it saves the person and the where-we-met note in one step and has the follow-up drafted for me to check before I send it. See how it works.

Next week: capturing a contact, with context, in under a minute.