Review Your Lists!

If you are like me, you live and die with lists. Things to do, people to call, tasks to complete, volunteers, prospects, schedules, action items… In many organizations, staff meetings consist of everyone reading their list to each other.

You also may have spent the whole year working hard to add contacts to your…LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc., etc., …lists. How often have you gone back and looked at who is on your lists?

Wherever your list is kept, in order to get the most out of your connections you need to organize your contacts, make notes about them (where did you meet, what did you do for them, what did they do for you, abilities, are they a guru???) You might find that there are four types of people on your lists:

• someone who actively see and connect with regularly (a keeper),
• someone you don’t remember (de-friend, remove),
• someone you forgot you knew, but is someone who you should re-connect with (a keeper), and
• someone who is not cataloged anywhere (maybe a lost prospect or a connection that helped you some time – you have to decide whether to keep or remove).

What is the advantage? Won’t the worthwhile connections surface once you have them on a list? You probably can think of several answers to these questions yourself! To me, this is like attending another networking session (or two) because it often comes up with people I should call (just to re-connect), people I should have thanked, people who I can help and people who can help me.

Sometimes you can find the most gold by digging in your own back yard!