The rules of networking have changed so much over the last twenty years and yet a lot of networking events and literature is still stuck somewhere south of 1995.
Some of those rules do still apply to breakfast meetings, conferences, trade shows and industry dinners - but that isn't exclusively how people are choosing WHO they buy from anymore, and the sleazy "I'm just here for myself" networker really has been confined to history.
So what does TIGER stand for? Trust As with all things Trust works two ways.
You have got to trust in what you are doing and that it will pay dividends - you have to keep going.
Your prospective networkers have got to trust you as an expert in your field - can they easily find proof that you are the individual who can answer their questions when they have need of that product or service? Over the last 20 years the general public have cocooned themselves into their own private world.
We don't like cold callers knocking on the door or disturbing us on the phone, we don't want junk mail from the postman or delivered to our inbox.
We want a network of people we can trust - if we haven't got that, we reach over, click on a mouse and find it in twenty seconds flat.
But people buy from people, creating trust across a network of potential customers is your way of ensuring they look for your details first.
Invest Put your hands up if - over the last year - you have gotten up two hours before you normally do, driven in the dark to a room full of lawyers, accountants and plumbers - and paid twenty bucks for a bad breakfast, because someone called it a networking opportunity.
Or maybe you hung around drinking bad wine and micro-waved tapas at eight at night (instead of putting your kids to bed) listening to a woman who wants to put warm stones on your back for therapy.
Either way - when was the last time you got up two hours earlier than normal and did the same thing on-line? All the people you REALLY need to speak to are out there somewhere, huddled into their own cosy groups - Linked In, Twitter, Facebook - a new "professional" network site seems to pop up on a weekly basis.
Give yourself an hour one morning this week before work, to find ten people who are openly networking and who could really use your product or service.
Do not be ordinary - invest time in your search, your introduction and your follow up.
The next three steps - GIVE, ENERGISE, REVIEW - will also require you to invest more time if you expect to reap any reward.
Give Give freely and regularly; and give much more than you are ever expecting back.
When you start to build your network, share articles that will be of interest to them, write articles that solve their problems, create literature that leads them to view you as an expert.
Introduce them to one another when they have need of the each other's services or products.
Energise The energy within YOUR network must stem from YOU - be the guiding light, the one who introduces useful contacts to useful contacts, keep in touch with all of them from the centre of your network web.
Review Are you networking in the right circles? Are the people in your current network capable of creating new business? How could you spend your networking time more productively?