I recently asked a professional friend of mine to define networking for me. His reply? “It is basically meeting new people, right?” And he wonders why he can never get anyone to return his calls. Networking is not as simple as two people standing in a room exchanging business cards, sales leads, or other information. It transcends that level of simplicity by light years.

Now I am not about to sit here and try to convince you that I am the authoritative figure on business networking – the swami of the handshake – the sultan of cocktail hour. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nevertheless, I would like to offer you some of my views of traditional (offline) business networking.

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