Networking Strategy: Build Connections That Pay

I'm Kurt Schmidt, founder of Schmidt Consulting Group and host of The Schmidt List podcast. The question I get from agency owners and B2B founders more than almost any other is some version of: "How do I actually build a pipeline without buying leads or blasting cold emails?" The answer every single time comes back to the same place. A deliberate, long-term networking strategy built on warm connections and genuine referrals.

I've been coaching founders and agency leaders on this for years. I wrote The Little Book of How to Build Your Career One Conversation at a Time specifically because I kept watching smart, capable people leave enormous pipeline value behind by either skipping networking entirely or showing up to events with the wrong frame. I want to fix both of those problems in this post.

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Why Does Networking Strategy Matter More Than Lead Generation Tools?

A focused networking strategy compounds over time in ways that paid lead generation simply does not. Cold email open rates have dropped more than 30% since 2018, per data tracked by Mailchimp's annual email benchmarks, and the trend continues downward. AI-generated spam has accelerated the collapse; spam filters are now AI-powered too, so the whole system is racing toward a zero-sum outcome where cold outreach produces almost nothing.

Warm introductions move in the opposite direction. When someone you trust says "you need to talk to this person," you open the email. You take the call. That's been true for decades and there's no technological force that changes it.

I recently talked through this in depth with Mike Adams, who spent 28 years in sales and marketing at companies like Apple, HP, and Zoom and attended over a thousand networking events in London. His core observation mirrors what I've seen across my own work: the firms and founders who win on pipeline are almost always the ones with the strongest referral networks, built through years of intentional relationship investment.

The math is especially stark for high-ticket B2B services. I've never heard of a six-figure services deal closing through a cold email farm. But I've watched dozens of those deals trace directly back to someone a founder met at an event two years earlier, stayed in casual contact with on LinkedIn, and eventually got introduced through.

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What's the Right Mindset Before You Walk Into a Networking Event?

The fastest way to fail at networking is to walk in with a sales agenda. I've coached people who went to their first events determined to "get leads" and came home demoralized every single time. Their mindset created the failure.

Go with one goal: have genuinely useful conversations and figure out how you can help the people you meet. That's it. No quota. No pressure to close anything. No imaginary funnel in your head where these strangers become clients by Thursday.

When you remove the transactional pressure from yourself, two things happen. First, you stop projecting desperation. And people read desperation immediately. Second, you open yourself to the serendipitous connections that actually produce value. In my experience, the most valuable introductions in a network come from people who seemed completely unrelated to your business at first. The consultant you chatted with about travel recommendations turns out to know the VP of Operations at your ideal prospect company. You would never have stayed in that conversation if you'd been scanning the room for "qualified leads."

This reframe is what I mean when I tell people: stop being a networker, start being a community builder. Actually, I go one step further. Think of yourself as a connector. Connectors walk into rooms already thinking about whose dots they can connect for others. That posture earns trust faster than any elevator pitch.

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How Should You Introduce Yourself at a Networking Event?

Your introduction. The answer to "what do you do?". Determines the first 30 seconds of every relationship. Most people waste those 30 seconds.

Here's the pattern I see constantly: someone asks what you do and gets a three-minute monologue about company history, client roster, and service lines. The other person's eyes glaze over. The conversation dies. The opportunity dies with it.

The fix is simple but requires real preparation. Frame your introduction around who you help and how. Specifically. "I help B2B software companies shorten their sales cycles" lands better than "I run a consulting firm that does go-to-market strategy." The first one describes impact; the second one describes a category.

Keep it under seven seconds. If they want more, they'll ask. Your job in that first introduction is to open a door, not walk through every room in the house.

Then pivot immediately to curiosity about them. Ask what challenge they're working through right now. Ask how you might be able to help. That sequence. Short value statement, genuine question, orientation toward their problem. Does more for trust-building in five minutes than a perfect pitch deck does in an hour.

Icebreakers are simpler than people make them. "What brought you here tonight?" and "Who's the most interesting person you've talked to so far?" both work reliably. Reference the venue, the speaker, the event theme. The content of the opener matters much less than the orientation behind it: curiosity and warmth rather than agenda.

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How Do You Follow Up After Meeting Someone?

Making a connection at an event without following up is roughly equivalent to planting a seed and never watering it. The conversation had no value. Nothing grows.

I tell everyone the same thing: follow up within 24 hours, while the context is still fresh. My preferred method, and the one I've seen work consistently across clients and my own network, mirrors what Mike Adams described: connect on LinkedIn at the event itself, then send a personal message that same night or the next morning. Reference where you met, what you talked about, and ask how you might be useful to them.

That specificity matters. "It was great meeting you at the SaaS Founders meetup last night. We talked about your Q3 hiring crunch and I think I know someone who could help" is a message someone remembers. "Great connecting!" is noise.

LinkedIn works as a lightweight CRM for this because the conversation history stays anchored to the person's profile, you see their career changes in real time, and those changes become natural reasons to reach back out. Someone switching companies or launching a new venture is a genuine reason to send a congratulatory message and resurface the relationship. It's attentiveness.

I use Notion for my own social CRM alongside LinkedIn. A simple table with names, context notes, last-contact dates, and relevant follow-up actions. I've shared a spreadsheet version of this with people I coach. You don't need Salesforce or HubSpot for relationship management at this stage. Those tools are built around funnels and deal stages; they're excellent once someone is in an active sales conversation, but they add friction to the earlier, looser stage of relationship building where most of this work happens.

The broader point: pipeline management approach is almost always a follow-up discipline problem before it's a lead volume problem. I've worked with firms that had plenty of introductions and zero system for turning them into relationships over time.

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How Do Paid Referrals Fit Into a Long-Term Networking Strategy?

Warm introductions have always carried informal value. People have been trading referrals and paying commissions under the table for as long as business has existed. The underexplored opportunity is making that system deliberate and trackable.

In a referral model, someone in your network makes an introduction; you close the deal; they receive a commission. This already happens constantly in B2B services. The problem is most of it runs on handshake agreements with no documentation, no tracking, and no reliable follow-through. The introducer often never gets paid because the deal was forgotten or disputed.

Formalizing this changes the economics meaningfully. If I'm an agency owner selling six-figure engagements, offering a 5% or 10% referral commission to a trusted connector who delivers a warm introduction is almost always worth it. The introduction does the qualification work that would otherwise cost me months of cold outreach. And the introducer is incentivized to think about my ideal client profile every time they're in a relevant conversation.

This connects directly to as a systematic pipeline approach. The firms I've seen build sustainable referral pipelines treat it as a formal program with clear commission structures, written agreements, and consistent communication with their introducer network.

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How Do You Build a Networking Strategy That Compounds Over Years?

The compounding effect of networking is real and it's underappreciated because the timeline is longer than most people want to think about. I regularly talk to people who got laid off and suddenly realize they should have been building relationships for the past five years. Every single one of them says the same thing: "I should have started this earlier."

It's the same psychology as financial investing, and the parallel is exact. You're taught from early adulthood to invest money so it compounds over decades. Almost nobody teaches you to invest in relationships the same way. But the mechanics are identical: small consistent deposits, compounding returns over time, and catastrophic underperformance if you wait until you need the return to start.

The practical implication is that your networking strategy should be active even when your pipeline is full. Especially then. The relationships you build during a good period are the ones that produce value during a hard period. Which will come.

For B2B founders launching something new, the network effect is even more direct. Your first customers, your first investors, your first hires. They almost always come from your existing network. A founder with a large, well-tended network can move dramatically faster in those first 90 days than one starting from scratch.

Surround yourself with people building things. I've seen this transform the trajectory of founders who were stuck: they started attending events specifically for other founders, absorbed the energy and the practical knowledge being shared, and came back with renewed momentum. The environment shapes you; the people around you set the ceiling for your own ambition.

I covered this topic in more depth on The Schmidt List, where it comes up constantly across every type of guest and every stage of business.

One honest note on fit: if you're a solo freelancer under $150K in annual revenue and your primary need is volume lead generation for small-ticket services, a specialist in outbound demand generation may serve you better than a referral-heavy networking strategy. Referral networks take time to build; they're the right approach for founders and agency owners selling relationships and outcomes over months or years. At very early stage or very low price points, the timeline math can work against you.

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Key Takeaways

• Go to networking events with a mindset of helping others; the absence of a sales agenda is what makes the strategy work.
• Your introduction should explain who you help and how in under seven seconds; save the detail for their follow-up questions.
• Follow up within 24 hours with a specific reference to the conversation; generic connection requests produce nothing.
• Use LinkedIn as a relationship layer, not just a directory; career change notifications are built-in reasons to re-engage.
• A simple Notion table or spreadsheet outperforms an out-of-box CRM for early-stage relationship management.
• Formalizing referral commissions with written agreements turns your network into a trackable pipeline asset.
• Build the network before you need it; the compounding returns require years of consistent investment to materialize.