5 Posts found for Author: Scott Allen

Any sophisticated contact manager allows you to customize the data fields. We recommend configuring your system to include fields for the following information:

Contact Information

• Employer, phone, address, e-mail, web site
• Partner/spouse full name
• Children (listed in descending order by age)
• Category: customer, supplier, lawyer, etc.
• Preferred communication methods (phone, e-mail, short message service, other)

Professional Data

• Resume. Whenever your friend switches jobs, just cut and

… [ Read more ]

Author: Scott Allen | Source: “The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online (AMACOM, 2005)” | Subject: Networking

One of the greatest merits of virtual communications is that you can easily recycle your own words. We recommend you create a Recyclable Document with all of the information that you reuse when communicating with people virtually. Simply cutting and pasting from the Recyclable Document will save you a great deal of time and make it easier to communicate in a consistent way. Some of … [ Read more ]

Author: Scott Allen | Source: “The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online (AMACOM, 2005)” | Subject: Networking

Aspects of the Relationship

• Age of the relationship
• Frequency of contact
• Emotional attachment
• Reciprocity
• Number of dimensions
• Common activities
• Degrees of closeness involved in an earlier encounter, however brief

Context of the Relationship

• Kinship
• Common language, values, and background
• Physical proximity
• Number of common ties
• Barriers to entry of the context in which you meet

Author: Scott Allen | Source: “The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online (AMACOM, 2005)” | Subjects: Classifying Relationships, Networking

Five of the keys measure the relationship between you and your acquaintance:

1. Character: Your integrity, clarity of motives, consistency of behavior, openness, discretion, and trustworthiness. This is driven by the reality and the appearance: the real content of your character, and what each acquaintance thinks of your character.
2. Competence: Your ability to walk your talk; your demonstrated capability.

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Author: Scott Allen | Source: “The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online (AMACOM, 2005)” | Subject: Networking

All of your relationships fall into two loosely-defined buckets, strong ties and weak ties:

1. Strong ties. Your strong ties are your family, close friends, and close professional colleagues. They are long term and high reciprocity; you help them and they help you.
2. Weak ties. Your weak ties are usually short term and instrumental; you interact with them for a specific purpose. These ties

… [ Read more ]

Author: Scott Allen | Source: “The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online (AMACOM, 2005)” | Subject: Networking