How to Follow Up After a Networking Event

Alexandra Roberts on executive presence and social protocol

The standard advice on following up after a networking event is sound and fairly short. Write within a day, mention where you met, connect on LinkedIn, check in every few months. What it leaves out is that the follow-ups that matter most were usually arranged before you left the room, in a half-sentence said on your way out of a conversation, and the other person has been waiting for them since.

“I’ll send you the name of that contractor.” “You should meet my partner, I’ll connect you.” People say these things to close a conversation warmly, and then they go home and forget them. The person on the receiving end does not forget. They heard a promise.

Most of them are never kept.

Keep the small promise first

I spent years at the host stand at Four Seasons San Francisco, and before that at the front desk of The Lowell in New York, and hotels taught me something that has held up in every boardroom since. Guests judge you far more on the small thing you said you would do than on the large thing you were paid to do. A room upgrade is expected. The newspaper you mentioned you would set aside, and then did, is what they tell their friends about.

A networking follow-up works the same way. If you offered something in the room, the follow-up is that thing, delivered, with a line or two around it. It needs no other excuse. And it carries more weight than any carefully composed “great to meet you” message, because it shows the person that what you say in passing can be relied on, which is most of what they were trying to find out about you in the first place.

Be careful, then, what you offer on the way out. I would rather a client make one promise at a reception and keep it than make five and keep two. If you could not actually produce the introduction, say you enjoyed the conversation and leave it there. The mechanics of that exit are in how to leave a conversation gracefully.

Write it down before you reach the car

Memory fails faster than people expect after a crowded evening. Before you have even left the building, write down each name, spelled the way that person spells it, and what you said you would do for them. If there is room, add the one detail they gave you that nobody else would know, such as the daughter starting at Cal in the fall or the vineyard they are trying to buy in Anderson Valley. The detail helps. The promise is the part you cannot afford to lose.

Send it the next morning

Every guide says within twenty-four hours, and that is right as far as it goes. I would narrow it. Do not send it that night. A message that arrives at 11:40 after a reception tells the other person you went straight from the party to your inbox, and it sits under everything else they receive overnight. By Thursday they have to work out who you are. Before ten the following morning is the window.

What the message says

Very little. Open with the specific thing they told you, which proves you were listening and spares them from placing you. Then deliver what you promised, whether that is the contractor’s name and number written out in full or the introduction made in the same email with both people copied, following the rules in the etiquette of the intro email. Sign off.

Leave out “we should grab coffee sometime.” If you want a meeting, propose one with a week attached. If you do not, the line is a second promise you have no intention of keeping, and you have just finished explaining why those cost you.

LinkedIn

A connection request sent with no note is the online version of leaving your business card on someone’s chair while they are at the bar.

When they are far more senior than you

None of the published advice addresses this, and it is where people make the most expensive mistakes. A chief executive or a general partner on Sand Hill Road met dozens of people that evening. Your message should cost them nothing. Write it so that no reply is required, and end on the thing you are giving. A closing question is a small piece of work you have handed them. “Here is the study I mentioned. No need to reply.” That sentence does more for you than any request for twenty minutes, because senior people notice who asks for something in the first message, and they remember who did not.

If there is something you want from them, wait until you have given them a reason to say yes. One useful message first. The ask can come in the spring.

Thank the host

Almost nobody does this. The person who invited you, or who put the evening together, hears nothing afterward except from the caterer. Write to them within a day or two, and if one of their introductions went somewhere, tell them so by name. Hosts rarely find out which of their pairings worked, and the guest who tells them is the guest who gets asked back. For a dinner or a seat at a table someone paid for, a handwritten card is better, and the details are in business thank-you note etiquette.

If nobody writes back

Silence after one message is almost always timing. Wait about two weeks and send one more, with something useful in it this time. Asking whether they saw the first one helps nobody. Then stop. A third message turns a busy person’s silence into a decision, and they will make it against you.

Months later

Several of the guides recommend a check-in every quarter, and I disagree with them. A scheduled note with no reason in it reads as a calendar reminder, because that is what it is. Write when there is something to write about, such as their company’s announcement, or an article that bears on the problem they described to you by the bar. It might be six weeks or eight months. Either way the message will make sense when they read it.

I work on this with executives more than they expect, usually after they have asked me about executive presence and assumed we would spend the hour on posture and speaking. What I end up changing, often first, is the next morning: what lands in someone’s inbox at nine, and whether it matches what was said over a glass of wine at eight the night before.