One of the things entrepreneurs always ask me is how to gain access to high value people and keep them engaged. If you’re smart and knowledgable you can usually network your way into a meeting with anyone in the startup world. While these activities shouldn’t involve a telephoto lens, you do need to perfect the art of almost stalking.

1. No answer means try harder: If you want to meet somebody, then a lot of other people probably want to as well. I’ve hear entrepreneurs say countless times, “I emailed him but he didn’t respond.” 

So?

 If somebody doesn’t respond, email them again…And again. People who receive a high volume of email might not respond on the first try. Until you’ve received a no, you haven’t received a no. Mark Suster wrote an amazing post on how to connect with high volume people that you should read.

2. People who broadcast their location and plans: If an investor puts on Plancast that they’re going to an event, they shouldn’t be surprised about getting pitched. If you want to meet someone, monitor their Twitter and Plancast accounts and show up. If they’re speaking at an event, you should go. It’s easy to ignore an email.  but it’s much harder to ignore somebody in person. 

After having a great meeting, a person who later became a member of Standard Start’s advisory board didn’t return a few of my emails requesting a second meeting. After seeing him tweet that he was going to the Public Enemy show at Summer Stage. I hauled ass over there, found him in line, set up the meeting and left him alone. That Friday he joined the advisory board. 

3. Find them on the interwebs: A great way to engage influentials is on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or wherever else they spend time online. Comment on their blogs, respond to their Tweets, talk to them in an authentic way that is more than just about business. If they Tweet about football or music, that’s the topic of conversation. 

It might seem disingenuous, but if you actually share these areas of interest it’s merely another means of forming a bond. Become engaged in their conversations and you become part of their community. It’s a lot easier to gain access from the inside.

4. Seek out their network: It’s hard to get high volume VC’s like Fred Wilson or Mark Suster to respond to pitch emails, let alone take a meaningful interest. Many investors and high value individuals tell you they only take intros from members of their network. This means you might need to get to know someone else to move on to the main prize.

Figure out your target works with and who they talk to online. Try and seek out people who are less prominent than or junior to your target but still close with them. If you form a bond with them, they will usually be happy to provide a warm introduction.  Finding founders from an investors portfolio is an especially good way to get a meaningful intros. 

This guide does not encourage actual stalking and/or harassment. You MUST be mindful of when you’re being annoying and fake. Remember that being respectful is incredibly important as you are trying to connect with people. 

Note: ‘The Integration of the Day’ is where I take two or more web services and create a HYPOTHETICAL integration. This is not an announcement or breaking news, just the thoughts of a fellow entrepreneur. I’d like to thank Charlie O’Donnell (check out his blog) for the idea.

Today’s ‘Integration of the Day’ combines schedule-sharing tool Plancast with CRM platform Salesforce. Plancast is like a Twitter for schedules, allowing users to broadcast their plans and subscribe to the feeds of other users. Plancast currently is dominated by tech events, providing great business development opportunities for people in the sector. A Plancast integration with Salesforce’s CRM platform would allow Salesforce users to find events that valuable contacts are attending.

User Experience: I would sign in to Salesforce, buy the Plancast app from the appexchange. Salesforce would automatically import my current Plancast subscriptions, after which I would set up a list of companies and individuals that I wanted to do follow. Salesforce would use Plancast data to create a schedule of events based on my list. Salesforce could tell me of possible connections with individuals in organizations by matching our Plancast accounts. I could set up custom alerts to notify me of ‘hot events’ where a high volume of targets will be attending, or I could track where my competitors were going to make sure I had a presence at those events.

Monetization: A Plancast app developed on the Force.com platform would be a valuable premium feature for biz-dev and sales professionals in the tech/new media space. Plancast could sell it in Salesforce’s appexchange to monetize the service. Plancast would remain free, but aggregating the data and combining it with Salesforce’s robust CRM would be extremely valuable to biz dev, and sales departments.

Thanks for reading. To hear what I have to say in bite size chunks, follow me on Twitter. If you have any integration suggestions, leave them in the comments below or email me.