The power of networking was on display in the U.S. 187 years ago today. In the presidential election of 1824, four men were vying for the Chief Executive’s office. They were Henry Clay from Kentucky, William Crawford from Georgia, Andrew Jackson from Tennessee, and John Quincy Adams from Massachusetts. In a hotly disputed contest, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote and had more electoral votes than the other three. However, according to the Twelfth Amendment, Jackson needed a majority of electoral votes to be named president. When the delegates to the electoral college did not produce a majority for any of the candidates, the Constitution required that the election results be put to a vote in the House of Representatives. It also stipulated that only the top three electoral vote-receiving presidential candidates would be considered in the House vote. This eliminated Henry Clay who had come in fourth place. Now Clay was the Speaker of the House and very influential. Adams knew this and asked for Clay’s help in securing the votes he needed to become president. On February 9, 1825, Clay delivered the votes, with thirteen states voting for Adams, seven for Jackson and three for Crawford. For his networking prowess, Adams named Clay the new Secretary of State.

Now Andrew Jackson was so angry he just about squeezed a major organ through his ears. He had anticipated that winning the popular vote and the fact that he had the most electoral votes would carry enough weight that the House would vote his way. He greatly underestimated the impact that a well-placed confidante championing your cause has on the opinions of people. You may call that dirty politics. Certainly Jackson did. However, who you know still has a great bearing on where you end up.

The same is true of business today. You need to be well connected with people who know enough about you to recommend your work and who know how to use their influence to make a business connection for you. For instance, have you been in a situation where you have wooed a new client by meeting with them to show them the benefits of your product or service? You may have put together a pricing proposal that was to their satisfaction, worked out the logistics to get everything to the customer on time, only to have the client go with your competitor just because the competitor knew someone on the inside of the company. "The more things change, the more they stay the same,” said the satirist John Baptiste Alphonse Karr¹. Outside of political appointments to places of high prestige like Adams and Clay, how do you connect with these types of people so you are not on the outside looking in after the next client presentation?

Know whom your people know

Everyone has business circles they run in. Take a look at the people in your business network. Who do they know? With whom are they doing business? Take a look at their LinkedIn connections. Ask them who they are currently working with. If you find that the people in your network are not engaged with any businesses that you want to pursue, you need to widen your network. Many times we hang out with people from the same industry all pursuing pretty much the same thing. I would look for people outside of your industry who would compliment what you are doing. Give some creative thought to this. For instance, if you are selling commercial cleaning services you might want to network with people who are selling pharmaceuticals to physician groups. That might seem like an odd match, but they both need to be in front of the same person: the physician’s office manager. Is it important that a doctor’s office gets cleaned? It is imperative with all the germs that come in their doors each day. You need to get in front of the office manager who makes the decisions on cleaning… and the pharmacy rep knows the office manager at every office they visit.

Trustworthy referrals

If a person in your network has the ear of someone on the inside of a company you are pursuing, ask for an introduction. Don’t be shy about this. A good networking partner should be able to take care of you. If they cannot, then there could be a level of trustworthiness that you need to take care of first. One of the common risks in any networking group is that if I recommend you to my best client and you fall short of their expectations, it will reflect badly on me. In this day of volatile business, who can risk taking that chance? Establishing trust between members of your network is crucial and this takes time. I went to a networking meeting today. To my right sat two people whom I have recommended countless times to my clients. I know the kind of work they do and I know they will never make me look bad in front of my clients. Quite the opposite is true. In the mind of my customers, these two people make me look very good, like I am a person who is so well connected and from which my customer needs to ask advice more frequently. It helps sets me apart from my competition. On my left sat two people I barely know. Would I recommend them to my best client? Not today, but maybe in the future. I need to know more about them. I need to see how they interact with their clients. I need to observe how they do business before I am ready to let them on the inside as a valued confidante. Here is the real work if you are using networking properly: it takes a commitment of time to get to know your networking partners. You cannot do this with an online social network, where you only refer based on what you are seeing on your computer. It takes face-to-face personal interaction to create a level of trust.

To this point, it is good to understand who you are networking with. Many times we are looking for people with a level of expertise in our networking circle. Someone with a good business IQ is great, but a good network may have more to do with personality than expertise. It may be a matter of who you know rather than what you know. Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point talks about the different kinds of people you want in your network. He divides them into Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. Connectors know a lot of people, what they do and are happy to make an introduction. Mavens know about products, what is good and what is bad. If you want to purchase something, you need a Maven. Likewise, you want a Maven to understand your products and services so they can bring the client to you. Salesmen are trendsetters. They wield influence by what they wear, say and do. When they buy into something or someone, others follow. If you can get near a Salesman, and he buys into your offerings, you will have a steady stream of referrals. All three of these types of people are well connected with others. Evaluate the people in your network. Who are the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen?

It should be noted that Andrew Jackson learned a valuable networking lesson from the election of 1824. He built his own network of influencers (primarily newspaper editors) who would not let go of the Adams/Clay alliance as a dirty political backroom deal. The label stuck. In 1828, Jackson soundly beat Adams in the next presidential election.

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1. John Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Les Guepes, January 1849.

Presidential election decided in the House, This Day in History, www.history.com

Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell. Little, Brown and Company, 2000.