Connecting sideways - who should you link with?

I spent last Thursday evening talking about Social Networking  & Marketing with a group of managers and consultants from IBC and CMI (the Chartered Management Institute) and apart from the challenge of fitting nearly 40 people into a room designed for 25, one of the key issues we discussed was how to make sure your efforts in social networking reach the right people. While posting your deep thoughts and what you had for breakfast on Twitter may be fun it won't bring in any business unless your potential clients are listening! As we all know though, the people you most want to meet as a consultant are the decision makers within a business and they're often far too busy to get involved in online networking - in fact in larger companies they may not even be able to access the websites.

One option that can pay dividends is to think slightly sideways about who you need to contact and influence. For example, if you offer facilitation or training you might be better off trying to contact interim managers or change managers who need to find ways of changing the way an organisation works. Similarly, HR specialists could seek out lawyers who specialise in employment tribunals and web designers could (and often do) hook up with marketing agencies and graphic designers who target similar clients. So your challenge for the weekend is to see if you can come up with a creative set of sideways contacts to make - to share them with with us just post a comment here.