Right relationships help us broaden our sphere of knowledge, land the perfect job, expand our business network, get valuable referrals, and yes, make life more interesting. And in this era of networking, we meet people on a regular basis personally or online, but it’s hard to retain their information given the challenging and dynamic work environments we find ourselves in.
Often, we forget the names and details of people we meet at an event, or a conference, or any informal setting. While we surely don’t want to retain details of every person we meet, we need to maintain a diverse yet selective network that can help us grow.
There are some apps that can help us locate the right network along with offering ways to connect with them.
1. Shapr (Android and iOS): This mobile app is highly effective in helping you meet new contacts!
It uses your tagged interests, location, and professional experience to suggest 10 to 15 inspiring profiles each day. The idea is to match relevant professionals in the same industries. And, once the profiles match, you can pick a day to meet for a cup of coffee, and take things to the next level.
2. Bizzabo (Android and iOS): Highly effective networking and event app for conferences!
Bizzabo’s event apps can boost your chances of meaningfully linking up with the right people. Event marketers can build a community, display their brand, maximize customer engagement and derive better ROI from their events. Bizzabo enables you to review event agenda, view attendees, mark leads and set up meetings even before the event starts. During an event, it helps to view session locations, message other attendees, get real-time updates about sessions, speakers and helps you participate in live polls and surveys administered by presenters. In a nutshell, you can find almost anything and everything about the event with Bizzabo.
3. CityHour (iOS): Helps you meet professionals at a moment’s notice!
The app allows you to locate and arrange face-to-face meetings with people based on matching interests, industry, or objectives. You can quickly meet anyone within a 50-mile radius who is looking for a meeting in the next two hours. This app helps you convert your downtime into an industrious networking session.
With CityHour, you can boost your business efforts, explore career opportunities and create new partnerships.
4. CircleBack (Android and iOS): Helps you organize your business contacts systematically!
Contact sharing is a significant part of any networking event, and you don’t want to keep looking for space on your mobile device to save your new contact info, or get stuck searching for a duplicate entry. Moreover, you don’t want to pass on outdated contact info to someone in your network. It is also not feasible to keep stacking business cards to be sorted later. This can gravely hamper your networking efforts.
CircleBack can help you deal with all the above scenarios and network meaningfully. CircleBack is a comprehensive contact management app for businesses. Powered by AI, the app offers contact deduplication, business card scanning, regular contact updates, and email signature capture feature to provide you with uncluttered and up-to-date contact information saved at a centralized location. It also helps you to add missing contact information to your address book, thus keeping your contacts info up-to-date and relevant at all times. So, exchange contact info flawlessly at any event using CircleBack, and schedule appointments on the spot using Calendly.
5. Calendly (Web): Makes scheduling simpler for everyone!
If you have met a prospect who’s really keen on learning more about your product, don’t wait to schedule a demo or a meeting back at your office. Simply use Calendly and send them a link immediately. You can choose a mutually agreeable date and time, and add a reminder on the calendar while still with the prospect.
It works well with Google, Outlook, Office 365 or iCloud calendar and integrates well with Salesforce, GoToMeeting, Zapier, Slack and more. Calendly also allows your customers to schedule a meeting directly from your website.
Networking is a rewarding way for people to broaden their contact database, especially when they are well equipped with tools and tricks of the trade. Always remember, a lost contact is a lost opportunity; maybe this person could have helped you gather important business contacts or find a good job, or maybe this person would have been a good candidate for your company. So, before you set out for networking, equip yourselves with the above apps to broaden your circle of influence and support.