Business directory for the Central Coast of NSW, Australia
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If your one of those people who aggressively walks the room zeroing in on any individual and handing them your business card before any words are said, stop. Nothing turns off a potential candidate more than someone they don’t know chewing their ear off about how good their product is. If you force your message on them then it will be in one ear and out the other. Plus, they won’t want to deal with you again.
Start by being a good listener, find out about their business first and see where there’s a match with your business. If you ask the right questions you’ll be able to see if they need your service even before they know what you do. The sign of a successful introduction is when they ask for your business card rather than thrusting it upon them. This means you’ve communicated well, built trust and are someone they want to deal with again in the future.
If by some miracle they don’t ask for your card, ask for theirs. Through the law of reciprocity it’s likely that they’ll ask for your card in return. And if they don’t it’s likely that they weren’t interested in your service anyway and aren’t likely to consider your service in future. Let it go and move on.
This refers to both the meeting and afterwards. Don’t work the room looking for any opportunity to hijack a conversion and banter to the poor sods about how good your service is and how everyone needs it.
When it comes to networking the most important thing is to establish a relationship by building trust and expertise. Ask plenty of questions about their business and see where you can add to the conversation about your understanding of their industry. By showing them that you’re aware of what’s going on in their world it establishes a connection. It also means they can be more open and share more.
Find out about what they do first (Ask some qualifying questions to see if they even need your product/service at the moment – there’s no point selling to someone who can’t/doesn’t need to buy). The key focus is to demonstrate that you’re an expert in your field and should they need your services in future, you’re the person to come and see.
It takes time to build trust and an understanding of what you do. On the rare occasions you might get immediate results but it’s more exception than the rule. Set your expectations that it will take a number of meetings before you start to see results, if they happen faster than lucky you.
The more meetings you attend the more other people can relate to you and it sends them a number of positive messages:
Give referrals first and you’ll get them in return.
Again we come back to the law of reciprocity (hopefully your seeing how important it is), if you help someone, in turn they feel an obligation to help you. This is often hard in the beginning as you don’t know many people so your connections are limited.
Think about ways you can add value to someone without asking for anything in return. Have you:
This does two things, one it creates a relationship and a line of communication as you’ve got to get this stuff to them. Two, it gives them something of value which they will then look for how they can add value to you (not a guarantee but works more times than not).
As with the point about not expecting immediate results, you have to go more than once to get real results from networking. The key aim is to build yourself as an expert in your field and someone other networkers can come to for information and advice. As with so many things, people want to know they’re dealing with an expert so they can be confident they’re getting the best service. This takes time to build and will happen by continually visiting networking groups.
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