4 Tips on How to Get the Most Out of Business Networking

You know how we invest our time to grow our businesses, including going to business

networking events to generate business and connections.

  1. Build Relationships FIRST

Good business networkers build relationships and friends first, which then leads to business. Doing this takes time and amazing follow up to get to the point of business development.

Whether it be a Meet Up, a Chamber of Commerce function, or an educational seminar, a lot of people get their businesses off the ground faster by hitting the business function networking circuit to build connections and expose business opportunity.

Remember, whenever possible, start your conversations with a question to the other person asking what they do and what they are at business networking events hoping to achieve. Then actively listen to their answers, and engage with questions like "tell me more about that" to keep them talking about themselves and their business.  

Only after they have exhausted what they want to say, and they then ask you what you do, do you get into what you do and try to keep it to about ½ the time that they spoke. With a good automated or semi-automated follow up tool in your hands, you don’t have to say it all at the first meeting.

The biggest issue at these functions is that you get to know someone just a little bit, grab a business card, add it to the stack in your pocket then promptly forget all you talked about with that person as you engage with another person.

Then it gets worse, the event finishes, and we have a pocket full of cards that we now need to follow up with, in order to get this friendship/connection stuff going, so we can possibly move on to doing business.

This can really slow down the first rule of building relationships if you are not diligent!

Sadly, I can tell you after hundreds of networking events, and maybe even thousands of business cards handed out, the follow up I get is less than 1%.

More often than not, those cards go to your office or home, get put on a desk… somehow magically they migrate to the side the garbage can is on over the next few days/weeks, and eventually seem to fall into the garbage can.

Usually this is due to the TOO HARD feeling, or the you are moving to slow and not attending enough events so you feel the lead has gone cold in a week or two. (you are right it has, you need to follow up within days for it to be useful). 

Fortunately, there is software for that. Small Biz Dream to the rescue!

    2. Crush it in a Short Time Frame

Don't go to one event a month in your area if you are planning to really grow your business fast. Go to 2 or 3 a week and magic starts to happen by month 2.

As you go to event after event, you start to run across more and more people you have seen and struck up a conversation with before.

If you have done your job of NOT VOMITTING all over them with what you do and trying to get them to buy the day you met them, you will find them slowly asking more and more about what you do if they have interest in what you have said so far. 

Better yet, they will start to bring others that they think need what you have!

It is simply amazing how much faster you can build your reputation by hitting many events in the same area over a 2 or 3-month period.

This of course continues to burden you with the follow up required to keep all these new relationships alive.

Wouldn't it be great if you had a way to take notes on each of them and keep it all recorded, so you could easily bring them up for a refresher before you talk to them again?

     3. Be a Connector!

If you are doing your Business Networking job correctly at this point, you will start to know enough about a lot of different people to be able to start connecting them together.  When you selflessly connect two business people who need each other, if either of them needs you they will be 100x more likely to learn more and do business with you now.

This of course takes excellent some excellent note taking and some good CRM or sales automation, or one HUGE brain to keep track of.  

Fortunately, there is software for that. Small Biz Dream to the rescue!

4. Have IMPECCABLE follow up!

Follow up is the key to business relationships!

Follow up can't just be you bashing on them to look at what you are doing, or buy what you are selling.

Follow up needs to always have value to the person you are following up with, OUTSIDE of just what you are selling that you know can help them.

Follow up can not always be the easy way like an email.

You should use all media you can when following up. Email them, PHONE them from time to time.  Yes I said it, PHONE THEM! Even if they don’t pick up (most of the time they do NOT) leave a message, then send an email or text message saying you left a message. 

This works whether you are just trying to get together for a coffee and get to know each other better, OR following up on information YOU sent them about your business, or following up on a sale you have made.

I know sounds hard, HARD is noticed. Easy is easily missed.

An email follow up that is automated can help. A proper CRM system that can send the left message email automatically also sure can help.

If you are going to employ automation, keep this VERY important concept in mind.  GOOD SALES AUTOMATION GOES UNDETECTED!

Make sure you personalize heavily and write creatively on any automated emails to make sure they do not feel automated.

Do not rely only on automation. Just be a good person who thinks about others.

For example, if you know they love golf and Hawaii, and you come across a picture or article about golfing in Hawaii, take the time to take a picture of it and email it to them, OR BETTER YET, OLD SCHOOL IT, send them by snail mail that article or magazine.

You will have gone from zero to hero in their eyes.

But why?

You listened to them, you remembered what they said, you cared about what they said, then you went above and beyond with a selfless act FOR THEM.

Sounds hard right?

Combine emails, text messages (SMS), phone calls, WhatsAPP, Viber, whatever communication methods you have learned they like together in order to keep the number of touches growing so you build that foundation from which business can be spawned.

So just what is this Small Biz Dream, and how can it help you master these 4 points and become the EXTREME BUSINESS NETWORKER you deserve to be?

Small Business Dream is a suite of software tools contained in a web and smartphone application that will help any small business or sales person grow their sales.

Things like Business Card Scanning to instant follow up email to automated follow up series, Contact Manager including the Left Message button to send an email when you have left a message, Sales Funnels, Twitter and Social Media tools, and a Survey Engine.

Build Relationships FIRST

By employing Small Biz Dream, you can simply set your email follow up email in the taxi on the way to the event, and scan cards of those you meet with their permission to email them follow-up information, and know that they have received your first follow up as soon as the card transcription is completed.

With a little creative use of the survey, you can even set up some follow up series to add the new contact to whether it is a personal sounding automation series, or a total business follow up or a blend of 2.

You can even have multiple series set up to start on a delayed basis that you trigger based upon what you learn the new person may be interested in with regards to your business.

Use Small Biz Dream correctly and you should be DONE the work the minute you leave the networking event, vs. going back to the office that evening or the next day to start cut and pasting your way to your follow up goals.

Add to this the ability to set the next phone follow up date, and make notes on exactly what has gone on with this person and what their interests are all in the miniCRM portion of Small Biz Dream and you are on your way to being Business Networker of the universe for those you meet.

Crush it in a Short Time Frame

By having control of your data and your follow up, you can attend a lot of events and still keep up with all the connections.  Keeping up with the follow up is the key to Crushing it in a short time frame.  You intensify the relationships as the first meeting you followed up immediately, this generates interest in how you are so effective.

By serving up the information about yourself and whatever they showed interest for of your products or services in a timely, friendly yet professional manner, you amplify your efforts dramatically.

They can talk to you about the last communication at the next event you met them at. You also have a common thing to talk about like previous events you saw them at.

The other key advantage of SmallBizDream.com is you can quickly look them up in the mobile app as you see them at another event to remember exactly what you knew about them, so you can approach them with more info than your non assisted brain may retain.

Be a Connector!

By having the mobile app at your fingertips and the ability to search your entire contact lists notes section, you can quickly see if you know anybody that can help a particular person you are speaking with and make the connection.Of course if you go with the CRUSH it at many events, then you also have the ability to retain more about more people and make natural connections without the app as well.

     Have IMPECCABLE follow up!

Imagine, a system that combines automated email follow ups, with semi-automated email follow ups, with semi automated social media follow ups, with a phone call action list mini CRM for manual phone call follow up (or export from Small Biz Dream to Phone Burner to even automate a large number of phone call follow ups).

Do you think you could increase your company sales, or your personal commissions over a short period of time with this strategy?

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