20A - Growing Your Social Capital

Domain Expert

1. Who they are, what their background is: 

• Elaine, Director of Tradeshow Sales. She has spent 15yrs is selling business software such as accounting, CRM, and lately Cloud solutions for Customer Success. 

2. How this person is a “domain expert”: 

• She travels around the country and meets with a lot of individuals during tradeshows. Each new person she meets she gives them her business card. 

3. How I found and contacted this person:

• A work colleague gave me her contact information as I am evaluating Customer Success software for the company I work for. 

4. Nature of Exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation:

• She answered my questions about the value of the business cards she uses today and gave me some ideas about how I could make them better. In return I agreed to sit through a demo of her product. 

5. How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity:

• She also agreed to be a “beta tester” should I get my idea off the ground 😊 

Market Expert

1. Who they are, what their background is:

• Jon, Senior Product Specialist at Salesforce. He has worked for Salesforce for 9yrs. 

2. How this person is a “market expert”:

• His main focus is attracting B2B customers to his platform with the intent on improving sales within their organizations. 

3. How I found and contacted this person:

• We utilize Salesforce in our organization and he is one of our account specialists. 

4. Nature of Exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation:

• I explained my idea and asked him for feedback on how I could possibly make it better. He gave me some suggestions about using existing technologies and the idea of creating an integration with Salesforce itself. That was something that I did not even contemplate. 

5. How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity:

• He said he would be happy to review my product when it I am ready to share it and if I wanted to look at integrating it with Salesforce he would be happy to point me in the right direction. 

Industry Supplier

1. Who they are, what their background is:

• Denise, Account Manager with Vistaprint. 

2. How this person is an “industry supplier”:

• Vistaprint is one the largest producers of business cards in the US. 

3. How I found and contacted this person:

• I have worked with Denise during partnerships with my company and Vistaprint. I haven’t spoken to her for a year or so but we keep in touch via email every once in a while. 

4. Nature of Exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation:

• This was a little bit of a weird conversation as in truth, my product will directly compete with them and if successful could put an end to paper business cards. She was very open and although she couldn’t tell me if Vistaprint are working on something similar she did say they have some exciting things in the pipe. In return I agreed to order a new batch of ‘paper’ business cards ☹ 

5. How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity:

• I am not quite sure how this will enhance my ability to exploit the opportunity yet, but I am going to try to get more market data if I can. 

Finally Reflect: This experience requires you to do a little 'targeted networking.' How will this experience shape how you participate in any future networking events? Did this experience differ from your networking experiences in the past? How?

This was a great experience talking to others with connections in the industry. It opened my eyes to how willing people are to talk about what they do and problems they have that I can help solve. My other networking experiences where good in their own way but I didn’t get as much market/industry insight than what I did this time around.