Networking for Business - Introduction

Over the next few weeks I'm going to share with you my experience of Business Networking and I hope this will help you become more effective with your Business Networking activity. I love people and helping people and I've been networking really effectively throughout 2010.

Now please don’t get me wrong – I am NOT an expert – I don’t profess to be an expert on Networking, but I’ve been doing it very effectively for the last year and a half and it has transformed my business; I’ve made an awful lot of friends, I’ve grown as a person and it’s been absolutely brilliant for me and my business.

I am a member of a nationwide business network called 4Networking and there are over 260 linked groups in the UK. So while my posts might be slightly more skewed around the way 4Networking is structured, I do believe and hope that my posts will be of help, benefit and interest to all people who go business networking. 

In fact I was pleased to see one of my mentors; Jeffrey Gitomer writing about Networking in his brilliant book - The Little Red Book of Selling. In Principle 5 of the book it's titled "It's Not Work - It's Net work" and Jeffrey makes 3 key points:

1. Get face to face first
Meeting someone on the phone is not the best way to start any relationship... when you meet someone face to face you can see them and hear them at the same time. This is 100 times more insightful.

2. Networking eliminates cold calling
Jeffrey considers cold calling to be a waste of time because when you cold call you are interrupting someone by trying to barge in and sell them something.

If you meet them first and they like you, you have a much better chance of doing business with them.

Imagine cold calling someone and then meeting them at a networking event. What would you say to them? "Hey remember me? I'm the guy who cold called you and you hung up om me!"

3. Networking leads to Referrals
By helping other people first you'll find that other people will help you. Not every person you meet whilst networking is a direct prospect but they may well know someone who is.

In this Blog series I'm going to share with you some ideas and some tips and some advice on how I’ve used Networking and I hope that this advice and tips and ideas will help you with your approach to networking.

In my next blog post I'll explain why your approach to networking is of the most importance.

Related posts:
In case you missed any of the other articles in the series just click the relevant link below:

Networking for Busines - Introduction
Networking for Busines - Part 1
Networking for Busines - Part 2
Networking for Busines - Part 3
Networking for Busines - Part 4
Networking for Busines - Part 5
Networking for Busines - Part 6
Networking for Busines - Part 7