photo by annia316 

A lot of business owners talk about growing their business by networking.  You imagine a crowded chamber after hours meeting and it’s hard to picture generating business in that kind of setting.

The reality is you can’t (or at least it’s unlikely).

What you can do at those kinds of events is meet new people and determine if they have any potential to collaborate with you in the future.  If they do and you can develop a mutually beneficial win-win relationship  over time with someone you get to Know, Like and Trust.

THEN you have some good potential to generate new business from networking!

I had a great demonstration of this the other day over coffee.

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Networking for your business is about making friends (you don’t have to kiss them…).

Unfortunately most people don’t really ‘get’ the whole networking thing, which makes going to networking events sometimes very painful.  As an example, at an event I was at last week there was a woman that was waiting in a corner and if anyone made eye contact or walked to closely to her she immediately jumped into her sales pitch.  Sadly she may have felt like she had a productive meeting – she cornered at least 3 different people that I saw, but I guarantee none of them left with a positive impression of her.

Networking is a great strategy for small business owners – people want to do business with other people (that they know, like and trust) not with some faceless company, so the playing field with the big guys is really leveled.  Networking is a marketing strategy that facilitates developing relationships that can generate referrals or business.

But what’s the right way to go about doing that?  Read the rest of this article and feel free to download my in-depth (18 page) report if you’d like to learn more.

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   photo by DuckBrown 

It can be really tough to be in Professional Services – especially if you’re on your own. 

Lawyers, Accountants, Doctors, Chiropractors, Consultants – there’s a bunch of people that fall into that list and all of them go out and fight the good fight during the day and then you’re expected to put on your marketing and sales costume when you have some free time and generate new business.

Like most business owners,  you’re really good at what you do…your craft…but you’re not necessarily great at the sales and marketing game.  In fact if you’re like most of us, the idea or marketing kind of makes you uncomfortable and you would much rather spend your time doing what you’re great at and just have clients show up on their own.

However, unless that’s a particular superpower that you happen to have (“Captain Marketing?”) then you’re in the same boat as the rest of us in terms of needing to consistently generate new business and clients. 

The good news is that there are some great (and comfortable) ways for Professionals to market themselves very successfully.  Here’s one example below:

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Ben Franklin was an amazing man – most people are familiar with several of his more famous inventions.  As an outcome of his studies of electricity he invented the lightning rod.  He also invented the bi-focal glasses that he’s often pictured with (he was both near and far sighted and got frustrated with having to switch glasses while he was working).

Beyond that, he’s also credited with creating the first Fire Insurance Company, he came up with the idea behind Daylight Savings Time and he helped form the first Library (as their known today) in 1731.

However, in addition to all of those great accomplishments, Franklin is also arguably the father of Social Networking (at least as it pertains to business). 

One of the better definitions of Networking that I’ve seen comes from Bob Burg – author of Endless Referrals:

Networking is the cultivating of mutually beneficial, give and take, win-win relationships.

Old Ben certainly knew a thing or two about the power of relationships and networking – even back in the 1700s!  He drove a lot of the ideas that make networking what it is today.

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Photo by Flyfshrmn98 

One of the key things that can make the networking process much easier is developing and getting extremely comfortable with your elevator pitch.

An elevator pitch is a concise, focused and interesting description of who you are and what you do, imagine if you were riding on an elevator with your perfect business prospect and you had just a few seconds to get your most important points across.

The intention – just like a 30 second commercial on radio or TV is to pique interest, give them just enough to get a glimmer of something interesting…and nothing more. You want to engage your audience, give them an interesting overview of what you can do – and then promptly move on to talking about them.

You’re not trying to sell, you’re networking and the primary focus of networking is to establish a connection by focusing on the other person. However, even if you get the ball rolling by asking them questions, at some point they will ask you what you do. By having a response that you’re comfortable with and that is intriguing / not boring you can convey the important up front stuff, make an impression and go back to focusing on making a connection.

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