I am in a wedding with a lot of high level executives. Should I network? –@YoavEzer
I get invited to the occasional dinner where there are a lot of people I would like to network with (See, “Someone wanted to throw a grenade at me” http://bit.ly/odzxqm).
The best way to network with someone cold (i.e. you don’t know them and know nobody in common) is to give them ideas that can help them make money. If you know who will be at the wedding, research their businesses, come up with 10 ideas for each person how they can improve their business.
It’s not like you are going to go up to them and say, “here are 10 ideas for your business.” But now if you are sitting next to them or find yourself casually talking to any of the people you want to network with, you are ready to instantly go into network-mode if the conversation starts to veer in the direction of their business.
Practicing this ability will get you better and better at it until you no longer have to come up with the lists in advance. You’ll be an idea machine at any event, able to manage the balance between casual conversation and idea generation with ease, and everyone will say, “we should have a meeting/coffee/lunch about this over the next week!”