Don’t dominate—communicate!
If you approach your business networking events only as a chance to talk about you and your business, you’ll stop people from engaging with you. Try to limit how much you dominate the conversation and focus on listening, learning, and laughing. People love to be listened to and will respond by wanting to know more about you. By simply listening, you may well be able to provide a solution to their problem or challenge.
Be consistent
Marketing is about consistent touches, so find business networking you love and attend them consistently while promoting that you are there.
Be focused
Thousands of official business networking events take place every day and the internet offers access to many more. The availability of all of these opportunities leads many people to take a random approach to networking – which results in failure to pay sufficient attention to specific opportunities.
Be selective
Identify and then act on the networking events that you believe are the best fit for your business.
Be Memorable
Consider things that will differentiate you from the crowd and increase your chances of success. Make sure you and your business card helps people remember you and what you have to offer.
Network everywhere you go
Without turning yourself into someone who is prepared to collar everyone with your pitch – treat every social event as an opportunity to meet new people. Be sure to talk about their challenges in business., you never know where you will meet that next great client, customer, or business partner.
Be friendly
Remember that people want to do business with ‘friends’. Try to be the kind of person that people trust to refer to their friends. It might not be the person you meet at a business networking event that will be your next client, but if you make the right impression it might be one of their contacts.
Help others
While your ultimate goal may be to find customers or to grow your business, if you want others to help you then you must be prepared to help them. Offer whatever resources you can – advice, contacts, support, and new ideas so you can increase your value to your business-networking group.
Be yourself
The best way to network is to not be conscious of the fact that you are networking. Don’t worry too much about the mechanics of networking. Relax, listen, and be genuinely excited to meet new people. It will surprise you how much your business networking efforts pay off!
If you want to chat about networking or require any business support, get in touch.
