The secrets of good networking, revealed by Natalia Ros

More than 20 years of business experience condensed in just one hour. Natalia Ros, founding partner of Forum Business Travel, has presented at the EIBTM fair in Barcelona her paper "Theory and Practice of Networking" with a surprising conclusion: “The best networking is achieved by doing your homework at home”.

How?

 

It is hard to believe that to build a good network of contacts, experts such as Natalia Ros recommend a purely individual work, but everything has its explanation. On the one hand,““those new relationships are of little use if later at home or in the office we do not write down impressions, set goals and order them”, she explainedó during her conference organized by Meeting Professionals International (MPI) last November 29 at EIBTM, the international business tourism trade fair.

On the other hand, the online revolution has moved some of the face-to-face networking to the computer screen. Although it is still a preliminary phase whose purpose, in most cases, is to make direct contact, it also involves doing your homework at home, taking care of social networks, insisted Ros.

Few people know how to make the most of these tools for professional and personal exchange. For this reason, Natalia Ros advanced some basic advice in her speech:

Have very clear objectives, choose the most suitable network to achieve them, participate actively, maintain personalized contact with the other members and disseminate a self-image in line with reality.

The networking session included a hands-on demonstration involving all attendees, led by Alda Egurrola-Wienke and Alessia Comis, members of MPI. Randomly paired, they were able to demonstrate their skills by introducing themselves to a stranger. The conclusion of the game is precisely one of the keys to networking: to show others that 10%, 20%, 30% that differentiates you from the rest.