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Imagine: You’ve just met a prospective connection for your network. They’re funny and interesting and above all know what they’re doing. They’re definitely an asset. You have their business card and they have yours; they call you the day after the event and ask if you’d like to stop by their office and then go out to lunch with them sometime.

Only, when you arrive at their office, a disaster meets your eyes. Papers are stacked everywhere, pens and scraps of paper litter their desk, along with a half-empty glass left over from their breakfast. Business cards lay, unorganized, in a large stack to the right of their computer. Your tentative connection digs around for a moment unearth his/her keys before grabbing their things and declaring that they’re ready to go.

Would you still want to connect with them? Hire them? Give them business? Could you respect someone who works in such a pig pen?

Maybe so. But you would at least have a moment of doubt before going forward with it, wouldn’t you? Of course you would. Seeing the extent of someone’s unorganization is a sure way to make you doubt your relationship with them.

It works the other way too, you know. If your desk is a mess, you can’t stay organized and you have leftovers from lunch hanging around at 3pm, your credibility and respectability will fall in the eyes of anyone who walks into your office. You have a choice when it comes to making sure that this doesn’t happen: never, ever let anyone else in your office  - or – clean it.

Cleaning your office may seem like an arduous task, but it’s not as bad as you might think. Process everything one object at a time; decide where it needs to be, what you need to do about it, and if you don’t need it, throw it out.

As you clean, keep telling yourself: this is good for my networking career. This will help me present a more respectable face to the world. This will get me clients. And it will. I promise you.

Most communication between human beings isn’t verbal – its visual. Of course, you wouldn’t think that’s the case, since we blab at each other all day long, but it’s true. You can say “Hello,” and people will get the simple greeting, but it’s your body language that tells them if you’re happy to see them, if you’re confident or shy, if you expect them to return the greeting. Because of how your standing or acting, the message they may be getting may in fact be “I wish you would say hi to me, but I know you won’t” or “I’m awesome and you’d better know it.” Those are much more complex messages than just “Hello.”

The problem is that most the messages we send and receive are subconscious. We don’t quite realize what message we’re sending, and we don’t know how we figured out that this person is shy while that one is so outgoing they’re not likely to listen to you – we just know. It’s an instinct. But we may not be sending the messages that we want to send, and if that’s the case, we need to put in a little extra effort, override our instinct and take control of the messages we send.

In order to do this, we first need to become aware of the messages we’re sending. Before you walk into a networking event, take stock of how you’re standing. Is your back straight, or are you slumped? Is your head up so that you can look people straight in the eye? Or are you more likely to stare at the ground? Also make sure to be aware of how you act when in conversation with other people. Are you gesturing? Are you gesturing too much? Do you fidget, do you meet people’s eyes? All of these are important details if you’re going to make a good impression.

Try to check back on your posture and behaviors periodically, and when you feel like something is wrong, fix it. Don’t beat yourself up about it, just fix it. It’s ok if you keep reverting back to your old posture as long as you keep putting in the effort to fix it when you realize what you’ve done. Eventually you’ll get in the hang of keeping the new posture instead of the old.

You may be the funniest, nicest, most useful person around, but if you dress like a slob, no one is going to take you seriously.

I know that information can be hard to hear, so I got it out of the way up there. Whether we like it or not, appearances matter, and first impressions matter even more. If you’re out there in the world, trying to network, you need to dress professionally. You need to dress like someone who deserves to he heard out and you need to dress like someone who other people will want to know. It’s that simple.

But that’s not the only reason you should dress nice when you set out to network. The other reason, which may be even more important, is a principle that I like to summarize by saying, “brighter feathers make a bolder bird.” In other words, if you dress nice, you will automatically become more confident. Your clothes can definitely affect your mood.

Haven’t this ever happened to you? You put on clothes that you usually wear to work, and you’re immediately in your ‘work’ mindset. You put on sweats once you get home and suddenly all you want to do is watch TV and eat dinner. You put on the clothes you wear to exercise, and you are immediately ready to work up a sweat.

This also works on the same premise as ‘fake it ‘til you make it.’ Dress like the person you want to be, and not only will other people see you that way, you’ll also start to see yourself that way.

In other words, in order to become someone who others take seriously and who knows that they will be taken seriously, you need to dress for success. Men, this means suits whenever it’s appropriate, and a collared shirt when it’s not. Women, dress nice, but err on the conservative side of fashion if you can. You may find that wearing brighter colors will make you more confident and attract attention to you as well; use them as you see fit, but be careful not to overdo it. You don’t want to burn anyone’s corneas. Keep it professional.

Try it next time you’re out to network, and see if this works for you.

We all know that you know your business. You’re an expert, a genius. You know your stuff. And that’s great, but…

We don’t always understand what your saying. You’re speaking in… what’s the layman’s term for it? Jargon.

Jargon, whether computer-jargon, accounting-jargon, or some other kind of jargon I haven’t heard of yet, is the bane of clear communication between people from different workplaces, and is therefore the bane of networking in general.

This is because networking is all about clear communication. You will be severely limited in what you can accomplish by networking if you can’t make your contacts understand you. They have to know what you want in order to help you, and you have to be able to understand what they want in order to be able to help them. At the heart of it, networking is an information business, and if the information doesn’t get across the gap between your jargon and their understanding, no real connection will be made.

Think about it this way: when you speak in jargon, you’re speaking a language that others will not be able to understand. You won’t awe them with your all-knowingness; you’ll bore them because they won’t have a clue what your talking about.

So. When you’re out networking, picking up some new contacts, make sure that you speak in plain old English so that your new contacts will be able to understand you. You may have to take a couple moments before networking, and think about a way to clearly explain different parts of your job in layman’s terms. If it’s too complicated, you may consider comparing it to something that is common knowledge, even if the fit isn’t exact. That way, your contact can at least get the general idea of what you’re trying to explain instead of being completely lost.

In other words, do whatever you think is necessary to make yourself understood. But remember that you not only have to articulate yourself clearly; you also need to make sure that you keep your audience interested in what your explaining. Networking also isn’t going to happen if they wander away halfway through your explanation. If you can tell a story to illustrate your point or better explain what it is that you want them to understand, you will have made a good impression.

Your daily routine is a trap. A cage. A cave from which you rarely venture forth to see the light of day. You do the same things at the same times day-in and day-out, you go the same places and you see the same people. The exact same people. You may love them or hate them but they are the people you know, and you are comfortable with them.

But the the truth is, no matter how comfortable, happy, or resigned you may be about seeing only the usual people every day, if you aren’t meeting new people, you aren’t networking. And that’s what you’re here to learn, right? Networking.

It may scare you, it may make you uncomfortable, it may make you feel nauseous, but you need to get out of your cave, walk into the sunlight and present yourself to the world; how else will it know what you have to offer?

And, of course, there are many different ways you can do this. You could call up a friend who you haven’t see for a while and renew your ties with them. You could follow up on a referral that a friend gave you ages ago. You could visit somewhere you haven’t visited before. Anything to get you out of that cage you’ve been living in.

Going to conferences is a great way to get out of your cave and meet new people. You’ll have an easy conversation topic with anyone that you meet because you can assume that they’re also interested in the topic of the conference if they decided to come. And people will be in a mood to meet new people, because that’s what they expect to do at a conference. This is all in your favor if you’re not quite comfortable with meeting new people yet.

If you want a bit more of a challenge, you could just charge out into the world; start talking to people that you meet at the supermarket, go out to a new restaurant for dinner and make conversation with a stranger, or even join a group that you’d previously been interested in but never got around to joining. Any of these free-form ways of meeting people will suit the more confident networker just fine.

Whatever your comfort level is, and whatever way you choose, just make sure you are meeting new people, and not falling back into the same old rut of seeing only the same old people.