How to Make the Right Connections When You Don’t Already Have an “In”

Developing a robust network is critical to your professional success. After all, it’s often your primary source of business opportunities and referrals. But what if you don’t know the right people who can help you?

Perhaps you’re new to your field, or you’ve changed locations – but regardless of the reason, the problem is the same: if you’re starting with the wrong connections, how can you hope to work your way into the right ones? That’s a challenge I discuss in my new book Entrepreneurial You, and here are four strategies to consider.

First, embrace specificity. Your existing contacts likely want to help you – they just don’t know how, especially if your new realm is outside their area of expertise. So don’t just hope they intuit what you need. Instead, get specific about the type of people you’d like to meet. Your friends need to be able to visualize who would be a good introduction for you. For instance, you could say, “I’d love to consult for Google one day. Do you know anyone who works there that you might be able to introduce me to?” Or you could sort by title and tell your friends, “I’m interested in making connections with anyone you know who is a vice president of human resources. Do you know anyone with that role?”

You can also use LinkedIn to speed up this process; you can scour your friends’ contacts to see if there’s a specific person you’d like an introduction to. People’s level of closeness to their LinkedIn contacts varies; be prepared for them to say they don’t actually know the person well, or at all. But if they are good friends with that person, they may well be willing to make a personal introduction.