"How do I sustain a connection past the initial interaction?"

Share your own tips for fostering a new relationship.

1. Find a way to help.
2. Find a way to care.

Use this holiday season to better your network and relationships.

Share your own holiday party tips.

As for me, I went fishing this weekend!

Share what you will or have already done!

Today's post is a Master's Mission from the team at myGreenlight! - KF

On the latest Social Capitalist webinar for myGreenlight (formerly Relationship Masters Academy), master networker Heidi Roizen explained when approaching a contact for help you should always lead with generosity (right in line with myGreenlight principles). She was then asked:

What has been the best and most original way someone has ever approached you and what did they offer?

The top three creative currencies she was offered are:

• When she was working to lose weight, a personal trainer offered to train her for free if he could ask her questions while they worked out.
• An MBA student offered to baby-sit her kids.
• A contact offered to cook her dinner!

If you approach currency in a fun and creative way, your target will have fun with it too.

Your Mission: Go get creative! Think of three unique currencies that you can offer to a critical contact.

Let us know what you came up with.

How have you managed to build close relationships with the opposite gender?

What's the biggest mistake you've made when connecting?

Learning how to effectively utilize your connection capital can propel you farther than anything you learned in college. Connection capital combines your existing connections with your ability to give good advice. Snag a great mentor by figuring out how your capital can make them even more successful.

Your Mission: Be a swiss army knife of advice. Pick a contact who you know well and whose expertise is directly in line with your goals and elevate your relationship so that they become a mentor - someone who doesn't just know you, someone who's really rooting for you and willing to help. Do this by offering your currency. What do you have to offer someone who is more successful than you? Advice! Really successful people have usually gotten there by being extremely focused and driven. As a result, other aspects of their life can easily have fallen by the wayside. There is a good chance you know more about: fitness and nutrition, investing, auto mechanics, or other hobbies, passions and causes. Dig deep and share your knowledge with them. Obviously there needs to already be a foundation of trust if the advice you have to offer is around something personal; you need to have earned permission to "go there."

Pick your target mentor NOW and think about the chinks in their armor and how you can help. Report back and let us know: were you able to match your knowledge to a potential mentor's need?

Mission Adapted From: The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg

Once a month I'll be presenting a stellar success story from someone who has read my books or participated in the Relationship Masters Academy. This month's story comes from Mike Dover.

I adopted dinner parties as a business development tool after reading Never Eat Alone – my first party was about 4 years ago; since then I’ve entertained more than 200 people. I usually do all the cooking, but took your advice about hiring help to serve it, clean up, etc.

Socially, the parties were always a success – we had some great conversations and I made a lot of great connections and some special friendships.

From a business point of view, they were successful as well. I just closed a new business deal that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t invite an acquaintance to dinner. All in all, the pure ROI of these events is now more than 500 percent – which, of course, doesn’t count the benefits of hosting a lot of great parties.

My advice to Keith's readers:

• Plan events at least 60 days out.
• Choose a good night for your schedule. I used to have my events on Thursday nights as suggested in NEA, but have moved to Saturday since it's consistently best for me.
• Plan the guest list for good conversation but also balance personality types.
• Don’t treat your dinners as pure business events. It took me a long time to get my first piece of business from a dinner party, but in my business anyway, one new contract pays for a lot of parties.

What challenges or successes have you experienced while mixing business with pleasure?

I’ve been thinking about reaching out to the head of my old group for quite a while. I would love to use him as a reference in the future, but hate the thought of calling someone up under the pretense of reconnecting, only to ask for a favor in the same breath. Any tips on what to say or how to approach this conversation?

If you’ve read Never Eat Alone, you’re familiar with my recommendation to “build it before you need it” – to make sure that your network is strong and well fed with generosity so that it is a ready resource when the time comes to tap into it for help.

But what do you do it you haven’t built it and you need it, now?

If the relationship was never strong, then you may be SOL. But if it was once strong, and you’ve just dropped the ball, then I recommend being really upfront about what you need. At the same time, make it clear that it’s equally important to you to renew your relationship.

You might say something like, "I'll be honest, your name came up in my head because I'm going to be needing references soon, so I got to thinking about the people I had great working relationships with. My thoughts went to you immediately, and I realized it’s been far too long. Could I take you to coffee to catch up, or give you a call? I’m making some changes in my career and I’d love your advice on ….x."

Everyone has an agenda – in fact, most of us have many agendas. The key is to not pretend otherwise. That's a recipe for making people feel used rather than needed.

Do you see the difference?

Your mission: Ask someone you know only virtually to meet you in person for coffee or a meal. Or do the virtual version: Have a video call on skype.com. (Skype is incredible, and one-on-one video conferencing is completely free. If you haven’t used it yet, give it a try.)

Need a script? You could say, “We’re wasting an opportunity by not sitting down for a real conversation – I want to hear more about you and your business. I bet there are ways we could be helping each other.”

Here are two reasons why I want you to do this:

1. Information share: I guarantee you each have info valuable to each other’s business that you just haven’t thought to share. You’ll benefit from their knowledge, their perspective, and perhaps, their network. Who knows what new opportunities you’ll spin up for each other.
2. Getting Personal Feels Good: It’ll take an hour to have this meeting. But it will have a profoundly positive effect on what it feels like to interact with them from here on in. That’s a great investment of your time.

So fess up: How many local-but-virtual-only biz relationships like this do you you have? Ever thought about making the leap?