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Let’s discuss how many contacts you need to network with to be successful. Being in different industries, the answers vary quite a bit. From starting a new career to starting a new business, you need to network with people regardless. I will go over the different amount of people to know that can help you start seeing results with whatever you are doing.

When networking, you are looking for contacts that can bring value to what you are doing. When figuring out the number of people needed, it is also important to look for quality as well. You want to make sure you are networking with people who can help you with your purpose. For example, if you are in the market for selling golf equipment, it wouldn’t make sense to go network with a bowling club. Although you may meet one or two people, it wouldn’t be as powerful as networking with people at a golf club. Make sure you know what you are looking for before you start going out and networking with people.

 

There are plenty of contacts

In the United States, there are roughly around 200 million adults. It is fair to say each adult should roughly know about 500-1000 people. And with each person you meet, you are more than likely share an acquaintance from your list of people you know and the list of people they know. At the end of the day, the number how many contacts you can make is pretty much unlimited if you were to go out and network with everyone on your list and start networking with everyone on there and then everyone on their list and so on and so on. Having a huge number of connections is not going to guarantee you any type of success if no one brings value to what you are doing.

Before going out and networking, make sure you have a plan for the type of people you are trying to network with. Know the things that everyone can commonly agree on. This means knowing how they usually will react to a certain idea. For example, if I were going to look for people to help me boost my career, I would look for people who can commonly agree that career development is good.

 

how many contacts

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

How many contacts do you need?

Let’s go over how many contacts are usually required to become successful in starting a new career or business.

Starting A New Career

For people who are starting a new career, a good number can be 1-10 people. For me, when I am looking for a new position, I tend to network with people who do the hiring or people who know the person that hires. If you know one person who hires for the company you are looking for, then you just need that one person to get what you are looking for. More than likely, you do not know that person yet, so focus on people that surround this person. If you knew other employees or supervisors that all shared the same idea that working at this one company is a good idea than you mutually have a connection with a few people. So now it’s the matter of connecting with this person.

When you are starting a new career, it is important to know where to network yourself in order to advance your career. With good planning, you can land yourself in a good position at a company that you like. If you don’t connect with the right people you will end up wasting a lot of time and not be any closer to where you want to be.

Starting A New Business

When you are starting a business is it important to know where you can find potential clients. Similar to starting a new career, you need to know what you are looking for before you get started. It is also important to know how many transactions or sales are needed to make positive gains. The number of how many people you are going to need is going to vary a lot because everyone has a different idea of what is needed to be successful.

When starting a business the number is going to vary from 100-1000 people. Depending on your business you could even start with as low as 50 people. Your focus should be quality, so while networking you want people that agree on one idea. When you start to find people who agree with the idea, it is important to find people within their connections who would also agree with the idea. When you figure out the number of people needed to run your business successfully, then it will become easier to know how many people you need in your network.

Keep track of how much value each person brings to you. For sales, this is easy because you can figure out how much people are willing to spend on your idea. You can calculate the average each person spends and calculate how many people need to hit certain to hit certain goals within a certain amount of time. For example, if you sell T-Shirts and you profit $5 off each shirt you sell then all you need to do is know how much you need each month to be successful. Let’s say you want to make $2000 a month, then you would need 400 people to purchase 1 shirt from you each month.

 

Conclusion

For starting a career, you should keep a list of everyone you are networking with so that you can keep track of how many people are helping you network with others. You should also keep track of what company they work at and their position. Then you can start putting together networks of people to start and advance your career.

The best way to network is the find people that are considered to be “a hub”. These are people who are already networking and know a lot of people that share the same idea as you. So if you are looking to start a career then you are better off networking with recruiters because they are going to know more people in different places that can relate to the same idea. If you own a business, you want to reach out to influencers of your niche because they are going to have a following of people that you can start networking with.

When it comes to figuring out how many contacts you need to network with is it important to start with the common idea. You need to know why you are networking and what you are looking for. Then you can start to figure out how many people are needed to become successful.