Archive for the ‘Networking’ Category

Notes from our meeting on February 5th.

The way to effectively use of Social Media is very similar to traditional networking activities.

• Decide what we want to accomplish before we invest time and money in any activity
• One purpose might simply to stay in front of our prospects and clients so they do not forget us
• Use the social media vehicles our targets are using
• Stay within the culture of the social media we are using
• The more we focus on helping others rather than trying to sell, the more effective our efforts will be

If we have a mass market you are trying to reach, then Facebook and Twitter might be viable alternatives.

If we are looking to connect with professionals, then Linkedin might be a good choice.

Facebook has the best viral component tool and is also an easy way for non-technical types to provide visuals.

For most us who have started a business consulting practice, our first client was actually the easiest one to get once we figured out where to look.

The reason is that most of us have a network of people who know and trust us. Even if you have not focused on networking in a while, you probably can come up with at least 10 people in the business world who know and trust you. If each of these people know at least 10 people, you have a working network of 100 business people. When you start your consulting practice, this is the group of people you should be focused on reaching.

Of course, if you what to jump start your consulting practice, start your networking fast and furious. It will pay big results.

A ton of material has been written about sales and marketing. Most of it is geared toward what works for big corporations.

Most “textbook” sales and marketing activities require a huge investment in time and money in order to be effective. Implementing almost any sales or marketing activity with less than a complete commitment to the program is throwing your money away. 

I have found for myself and my clients that spending money on “sales and marketing” seems like a good thing, so it is easy to get caught up spending money on activities that are not cost effective.

In my business, when I stopped talking about “sales and marketing activities” with “getting customer activities,” it became obvious that many our sales and marketing activities were not producing enough results to justify the cost.  The reason it became effective was that it changed the question I was asking. Instead of “is this a good sales and marketing program?” I asked “is this program getting us customers?

One activity I stopped was casual networking, such as chamber events. Over the last 12 years, almost all of our clients and customers have come from either previous clients or people we had relationships with. We have gotten almost no revenue from the casual networking and these events can consume a lot of time. That time is being spent much more effectively now strenghtening our relationships and finding new relationships through our existing customer and relationship base.

I do not mean to imply that casual networking will not work for you. But unless you have an unlimited budget of time and money, consider looking at each of your activities in terms of how much business you are or will get.

Social Media is all the hit these days. But the challenge is that most of the hype is about connect with lots of people and getting lots of people following you.

As usual, the hype misses the real point. The rules for being successful at Social Media are pretty much the same as they are with traditional networking. 

In my 12 years of consulting, I have met thousands of people and have several hundred business cards laying around my office closet. I do not remember who gave me the vast majority of those cards, let along exchanged any valuable referrals.

Instead, almost all of the referrals I have gotten over the years that have turned into real business came from a select number of strategic networking partners I have gotten to know well. I trust sending business to them and they trust sending business to me.

It might be good for my ego to have 20,000 people following me on Twitter, but it would be much better for my wallet to have 20 people on Twitter who thought enough about what I said to send me real business. I have discovered that most of the people who are successfully using the new Social Media are following the same rules they follow for traditional networking. Relationships and trust are built with time and quality communication.