As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I can tell you that Networking is one of the most misunderstood marketing terms there is.
Professional speakers, consultants, coaches, and independent professionals either love it or hate it - and no matter which camp you find yourself in, there are probably some misconceptions and misunderstanding that are preventing you from making networking as fully effective as it can be and should be to help you grow your business.
Networking: What is it?
- Meeting people at events, mixers etc. (the obvious first step)
- Goal: move it to a different level, namely...
Power networking
- Introducing people to each other (Netweaving)
- Having breakfast, lunch, coffee or dinner 1-on-1 to build new key relationships
- Meeting people in organizations (civic/social; religious; recreational)
- ASKING people to introduce you to someone
- Doing favors for people for no reason (random acts of networking kindness)
- Asking others for help and resources
- Bringing a group of your own together for brainstorming, mastermind group, etc.
Maximize Your Affiliations
- Friends, neighbors, church, hobbies, past bosses and colleagues
- Speakers Bureaus, meeting planners, training companies, event producers
- Your Professional affiliations (trade, professional, civic, etc)
- Other colleagues outside of your peer groups such as NSA (speakers), IMC (consultants), or ICF (coaches)
- Your Industry affiliations within your target industry groups
Your Keys to Networking Success
- Over deliver make them look like a genius for referring or connecting you
- Lead and get involved (raise your visibility and credibility within each group)
- Serve on committees, projects, and bring “outside” ideas to solve big problems
- Become known as a connector, a hub, and a linchpin
- Give three times as much as you hope to get
How about you?
Use the COMMENTS area below to share your networking ideas and tips...
Every small business has a brand, whether they know it or not. That branding occurs in the minds of your customers, prospects, employees, stakeholders, and community at large. One mistake that’s fairly common in small business is letting the marketplace determine your company’s positioning.
You need to take control of your brand and position yourself in the marketplace. It is your job to shape and fashion the perception that prospects have of you and your firm. If you assume that “everyone knows what our company does,” you're in trouble – big trouble. It is your job to determine, define, brand, present, and then control the way your business is perceived.
Here are a few basic, but very important, elements in controlling perception: What's the message (written and unwritten) conveyed by your business cards, your emails, and your brochures?
Imagine a motivational speaker whose email address ends in @aol.com or a management consultant who hands you a homemade business card with inkjet streaks and those little fringly perforated edges? Not exactly a confidence-builder, right?
Remember, people want to do business with professional, hassle-free, customer-centric businesses. The image you convey determines how prospects think of you.
When it comes to specific products and services, do you offer options and different levels of service, or a take-it-or-leave-it deal?
More importantly, do you talk about your company and what the company does (inputs) or do you focus on overt benefits to your customers and successful outcomes (results)?
If the client's bottom-line results are not foremost in your discussions, why should customers choose to work with your company? (Hint: work to develop a simple 1-page sales tool for each of your products and services where client results and outcomes – in dollars and cents – are always on page 1!)
As a marketing speaker, I'm often asked the question if I'm also a "motivational speaker" and my answer is no. Although I do admire motivational speakers and topics - and HAVE trafficked in a bit of leadership thinking and writing.
Here's an oldie but goodies from the archives:
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There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you
damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human
duty, the duty to take the consequences.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
As a leader, I will expose you to the options and the
likely consequences of those options.
-- Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
The Leadership 22
Leadership means...
* Exposing people to options
* Getting along with people
* Being a dealer in hope
* Sales (products, services, ideas, values)
* Teaching, mentoring, guiding
* Be the example
* Results, not talk
* Bringing sides together
* Being a dispenser of enthusiasm
* Solving problems
* Blazing the trail and leaving a path
* Producing more leaders
* Showing average people how to do the work of superior people
* Character and integrity
* Putting first things first
* The capacity to translate vision into reality
* Finding a parade and getting in front of it
* Your switch is never turned off
* The ability to communicate something people want
* Action, not position
* Backbone, wishbone, funny bone
* Doing the right things at the right time for the right reasons
What do YOU think? What would you ADD? Leave a comment below and share your opinion...
"You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'Yes' without having asked any clear question."
-- Albert Camus 
A lot of independent professionals and small business owners bristle at the notion that charm is a key business tool.
I think a lot of that bristling comes from the misconception that some people are simply born with charm, while others are not, and there's not a whole lot you can do if you're in that second group.
This is simply not true.
Another misconception is that for the charm-challenged to make any effort to be more charming or more personable would require them to be phony or at best, not be their genuine selves. False again.
There are several books, the best of which I've found to be
How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less by
Nicholas Boothman, that provide some great tools with which to make genuine connections with people, and to build your own personal set of charm-skills to apply to almost any business or social situation.
Let's face it: for the purposes of small business marketing, people are buying YOU before they buy anything you have to sell, say, or do.
Question: Given the choice of boosting either your charm or your intellect by 50%, which would you choose?
Why? Does the business world need more smart people or more charming people?
Haven't we gotten in trouble from people being (or thinking they were) too smart at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and the like?
Tip: Charm, like intelligence or any other personality
strength, can be used for good or for evil. It's totally up to you.
Now go charm the socks off someone!!