I absolutely love networking. Now that’s a phrase I never thought I would say! Like so many business owners I had known for about 6 months that I should go networking, as everyone had told me how great it can be for your business, but I hadn’t done any. The reason I hadn’t gone was I found the thought of trying to make small talk with people I didn’t know very stressful and so it would take right out of my comfort zone. Well 18 months ago I finally took the plunge after several aborted attempts! I had used www.findnetworkingevents.co.uk to find a list of local meetings and attended the Coventry 4Networking one.
I was hooked! Everyone was so lovely and made me feel very welcome. In the time I have been networking since I have recruited numerous direct clients, gain strategic alliance partners (these are people with synergistic businesses to mine and have a similar client base so we can cross promote our respective businesses), gained my first speaking engagements, exhibited at local Business Shows, and, found several business that have now become my suppliers. I’ve also met so many absolutely lovely people too.
I now run several networking groups (!) and I get to see business owners that join the groups and do well and also ones that don’t do so well. In my opinion the key to successful networking is actually quite simple…
1. Invest time in building relationships. Some people turn up once and focus on obtaining as many different business cards as they can but fail to actually start any meaningful dialogue with anyone. These people are networking “hunters”. They are out for a very quick return on their time investment, but the reality is they are unlikely to get much of a return at all. The people that do much better at networking are the “farmers”. These people invest time in building relationships over numerous meetings and it pays dividends.
2. Attend consistently. Different networking organisations have different attendance rules. These days there are a multitude of networking groups that do not insist on a 100% attendance record so the impetus to keep going regularly can sometimes be missing. Those people that do well networking are definitely those that attend regularly as this helps to build the relationships with the other attendees who will hopefully buy your services in the future. Just think about it for a minute…would you buy the services from a business who can’t even commit to attending a meeting on a once a month basis? Even worse, would you choose their services over those of a competitor to them that is attending regularly? No you wouldn’t, so why would your prospective clients think any differently about your attendance.
Some people get a quick return from networking and others take a little longer, but if you follow the 2 simple rules above you will definitely stand a far better chance of success.
Running your own business can be a lonely existence and it can be very easy to hide behind your laptop and convince yourself that networking won’t work for you. Maybe you’ve tried it once and it didn’t go well. The relationships you can build up through networking can easily become very central to your business success so please either take the plunge and go to your first networking event, or if you’ve had a bad experience try a different group. There are so many different style networking groups that exist these days that I’m positive you can find one (or more!) that will work well for you. Be brave and go networking!