If we’re being honest with ourselves—and I mean really honest—the only control we really have over our professional lives comes from our network.
I know. It seems crazy.
But if you really break down our careers, whether they’re in sales, marketing, leadership, etc, what you’ll find is that 1) we’re responsible for grasping changing trends, 2) acting on them in a way that brings our business success, and 3) and staying flexible/open enough to know when it’s time to change our thinking. It’s a lot like riding a bull. And like riding a bull, there are tons of risks—losing our footing, losing our balance, and ultimately, getting thrown off and having to run for our lives.
And what we really rely on in that situation—or in any situation—isn’t our ability to stay on the bull. We know we’re going to get thrown. What we rely on is the ability to get out of the ring when we need to. We rely on networking.
A strong network creates the ability for us to move on when we need to. It offers opportunities to bring new thinking into our workflows (what if that bullride could be used to generate electricity) and to help us pivot into new lines of business, new partnerships, etc.
Our network can help us see that the bull ride is actually a rocketship, a unicorn, if only we can look at it differently.
So when we’re approaching networking, we have to do it like our professional lives depend on it because—frankly—they do.
And while there are a number of incredible pieces that help us understand how best to go about networking (like this one, this one, and this one) and a thousand tools that remind us to follow up, there’s still one thing we don’t have—a tool that actually makes the act of networking easier.
And that’s where CircleBack comes in.
CircleBack—an AI-driven contact management app for business—actually uses the power of big data to give you free, consistent updates to all the contacts in your address book. So when that CEO you met last year changes jobs, you’ll know that they’ve changed, you’ll have their new contact information, and you’ll be able to reach out with ease.
But CircleBack isn’t just for managing the contacts you already have. It also offers easy business card scanning with simple CRM export with email signature capture which searches your inbox for contacts you don’t have but might need.
In a very real way, CircleBack takes the grunt work out of meeting new people and the guesswork out of keeping those relationships active. All you need to do is what you do best—keep out-thinking that bull.
Download CircleBack now for iOS and Android.