A question from India came to me via Twitter, and I found it to be such a universal topic that I thought I’d share it with you all.
(And BONUS–it was shot in my new home studio!)
What happens when your networking group hits a plateau?
That’s right-you read correctly.
Referrals come from cultivating real relationships. They come from putting the work into your networking by giving others referrals before expecting them in return. They don’t come from sitting idly in a meeting, watching others getting referrals and wondering where yours are.
Are you wondering just how to get that referral pipe flowing?
1. Become a farmer. Except you’re not cultivating seeds, but relationships. You’re not harvesting produce, but referrals. Networking is about farming for new contacts (and referrals,) not hunting them. Have One-to-Ones with your chapter members. Get to know them and their business well so you can begin to pass referrals to them. This is how you cultivate a relationship-show genuine interest and make an honest attempt at helping them succeed. You’ll build trust with one another, which makes the next step much easier. 
2. Find a referral partner. As I write in my book, Truth or Delusion, “There is a way to the flow of referrals predicable and adjustable.” After you’ve gotten to know your fellow chapter members, choose one to partner up with to pass referrals back and forth to one another. Pick someone who needs referrals you can provide (for example, if you have a toy shop owner in your Chapter but you have no kids and rarely interact with them, they might not be the best partner for you.) Determine what types of referrals you need and ask your partner to do the same; then, exchange specific referrals based on your own networks. Begin to set up meetings with your referrals and if it’s appropriate, bring your partner with you. Afterward, analyze the meetings with your partner and use as much detail as possible.
3. Get your PH.D. in Networking. Ok, not literally. But you can become a gatekeeper of networks as you begin to connect your network with another person’s, and then another person’s, and then continue to build upon it. Become the go-to person in your business community-the person others come to if they needed a referral for anything. “Know a trustworthy plumber? Yeah, ask Susan-she knows everybody!” But instead of becoming the human phone book, you are connecting people in your community with good, honest businesses. This will not only help you build your network referrals, but it will also force you to continue to build and deepen your relationships and provide you with an excellent reputation.
What process has worked for you when referral gathering?
Some people go to a networking mixer with only one goal in mind: surviving until the time they plan to leave. However, networking doesn’t have to be a dreaded activity! Here are two tips to help you make the most of your time at networking mixers, and to help you enjoy yourself so the time will practically fly by.
I highly recommend you try executing these two tips at your next networking mixer. After you do so, come back and leave a comment in the forum below to let me know how it worked out. I’m confident you’ll be pleased with the results and I’d love to hear about your experience!
Photo courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
People often think that networking is all about talking business and exchanging cards, but that’s a definite misconception.
In a networking group, you should talk about more than just business. A referral relationship is more than just, “I do business, you do business, let’s do business.” A much better approach is to find common ground on a personal level, then relate your business to it.
The longer I’ve been involved in networking, the more I’ve seen the power of personal interests in making connections. Networking is about building personal relationships. If you remove the personal from the equation, you limit the amount of business that can happen.
In one networking group I worked with, I introduced an exercise called the GAINS Exchange, in which people share personal and professional information about themselves. Two of the participants in this group had known each other for more than a year but had never done business. During the exercise, they discovered they both coached their sons’ soccer teams. They quickly became close friends and were soon helping each other conduct soccer practices. After a few months, they began referring business to each other–two guys who had barely spoken to each other the first year because they seemed to have so little in common.
By finding a common interest and starting with that, we can make connections that have a very good chance of turning into business. Try this strategy out for a while and then come back and leave a comment to let me know what your experiences have been–I’d love to hear about them!
I was talking with a business woman recently who is fairly new to networking and I was explaining that networking is a contact sport–that it requires people to get out there and actively and strategically build relationships. At one point she asked, “Well, what exactly does that involve? . . . What defines ‘active’ networking?”
This is actually a great question because it opens up a discussion about not only what it means to be an ‘active’ networker but also what it means to be a ‘passive’ networker.
Actively networking with others means you invite those people to one or more of the networking organizations you belong to, carry several of their business cards with you all the time, and above all, refer them whenever you have an opportunity to do so. Active networking also means having a reciprocal relationship with others.
Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
We prefer doing business with people who do business with us. Why give your business to someone who’s not willing to return the favor? There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of competent, dependable business professionals in your area who provide any given product or service. They don’t have to buy something from you to reciprocate. They can join one of your networking groups, carry your business cards, or simply refer you to people looking for your product or service.
Passively networking with others means that you use them as a resource occasionally but for some reason cannot actively network with them. It may be because they represent a narrow market where you have no way of assisting. Perhaps they’ve told you they’re not interested in participating in any networking organizations. Maybe they’re located too far away to refer to them regularly.
Now that you know the difference between active networking and passive networking, strengthen your networking strategy by making it a point to:
1. Identify members of your information, support, and referral network components.
2. Spot the voids and weaknesses in your network, and work to improve and fill it with valuable members.
Try pinpointing one person this week to actively and strategically build a relationship with. What can you do to begin to form a connection with them? I welcome your questions and comments in the comment forum below. Thanks!
In this video, I talk to my friend, French networking expert Marc-William Attie, about why networking is not a short term strategy and also why the long term commitment that goes along with networking is well worth your while.
Marc demonstrates the value of putting effort into networking by telling the story of an architect who spent three years building relationships with fellow networkers without receiving any significant referrals and then received a referral worth $300,000.00 . . . a payoff that was definitely worth the wait!
Do you have any stories about how your networking efforts have paid off in big ways? Is so, please share them in the comment forum below. Thanks!
Whether you’re just starting out in the world of networking or you’re a well seasoned networker, there’s one thing you should never go to a networking function without . . . strategy. In order to be a successful networker, you need to have a plan. For example, you need to know who your target market is and which networking events will offer the best opportunities to effectively connect with your target market.
So, how do you create a plan when you’re a time-strapped businessperson and you don’t even know where to begin? Well, you’re in luck–it’s a lot simpler than you think because the starting point is right in front of you. All you need to do is take three minutes to watch this quick video and I’ll pinpoint the three questions you need to ask yourself in order to develop a highly effective networking strategy specifically tailored for you and your business.
Networking works. It’s just a matter of crafting a plan that will put you in contact with the right people. Once you ask yourself the questions in this video and nail down the answers, you’ll be well on your way to networking smarter for maximum results.
This video comes from the educational video archive housed within NetworkingNow.com and it is just one example of the vast array of educational content offered on the NetworkingNow.com website—there are literally hundreds of business and networking downloads available in the site’s online library and you can access all of them for FREE for six months by entering the free subscription code given below.
The free subscription is a gift from BusinessNetworking.com and all you have to do is enter the code(“freesixmonths”) on NetworkingNow.com to gain access to the entire library of content! Please note that you will be required to enter a credit card number on the site but you will not be billed for the free six month membership. You will need to end your subscription if you don’t wish to be billed for the second six months.
Please leave a comment regarding your thoughts on this video and also letting me know what type of downloadable content you most like to access on sites like NetworkingNow.com:
Today I’d like to share a video that I recorded a while back that is timelessly useful when it comes to creating a solid and effective networking strategy. In the video, I outline the best way to find like-minded business professionals to network with and I explain the four different streams—or types of networks—which you should be sure to strategically build into your overall network.
This video comes from the educational video archive housed within NetworkingNow.com and it is just one example of the vast array of educational content offered on the NetworkingNow.com website—there are literally hundreds of business and networking downloads available in the site’s online library and you can access all of them for FREE for six months by entering the free subscription code given below.
The free subscription is a gift from BusinessNetworking.com and all you have to do is enter the code (“freesixmonths”) on NetworkingNow.com to gain access to the entire library of content! Please note that you will be required to enter a credit card number on the site but you will not be billed for the free six month membership. You will need to end your subscription if you don’t wish to be billed for the second six months.
Please leave a comment regarding your thoughts on this video and also letting me know what type of downloadable content you most like to access on sites like NetworkingNow.com:
During a conversation some years ago with Leslie Fiorenzo, a colleague of mine in the networking organization I founded, she made an interesting point of comparison between appreciating opera and learning to use word-of-mouth marketing in your business. She said, “The best way to experience opera is to see it on the stage, and the best way to use word of mouth is to put a referral marketing plan in place. The novice, in either case, may not know where to begin.”
We started talking about a system to generate business by referral and, just like opera, if you have little or no experience with referral marketing, it would be a mistake to jump into action without preparing yourself–preparation is key to success. Central to the referral-marketing process is getting people to send you referrals. To do so, they must know exactly what you do–what product or service you provide or make; how, and under what conditions, you provide it; how well you do it; and in what ways you are better at what you do than your competitors. You absolutely must communicate this information to your sources. And to communicate effectively, you must know the same things. Before business owners map out their referral marketing campaign, they must stop and get a clear picture of where their business currently stands.
Leslie commented that when people begin to learn and study opera, they begin with basic works by composers such as Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini before moving on to more complex works by composers such as Richard Wagner. In the same way, when marketing your business by word of mouth, there is a place to start before you meet with the people in your network. You begin by preparing answers to some basic questions about yourself and your business like:
1. Why are you in business?
2. What do you sell?
3. Who are your customers and
4. How well do you compete?
The ability to communicate this information to your sources and prospects will be invaluable as you begin to build your network and formulate your plan to gain more and more business the most effective way–through referrals.
Once you master some basic tools, you can move on to a deeper understanding of the process. For example, there are three laws of Notable Networking:
1. Have a positive and supportive attitude, and provide a positive and supportive environment for other business people.
2) Learn how to use networking tools efficiently, including business cards and an informative name badge, and have a business-card case to hold others’ cards.
3) Networking is an acquired skill that requires listening to CDs, reading books/articles, picking the brains of great networkers and practicing what you’ve learned.
One fantastic place to get information about all things related to networking is NetworkingNow.com. I highly recommend that you become familiar with the basic tools of word-of-mouth marketing and begin to implement them in your business so that you can begin to watch it grow. Because, just like appreciating opera, if you don’t begin with the basics, you won’t experience the optimum result.
If there is an educational resource which you’ve found to be specifically valuable and effective in learning to network, I urge you to share it in the comment forum below so others might utilize it and benefit from it as well. After you leave a comment, be sure to send a quick e-mail to larry@bni.com with the subject line “Blog Comment” so he can reply to you with a coupon code for a free six-month subscription to NetworkingNow.com.
Years ago, I met a woman who was known as the consummate networker – she had hundreds (if not thousands) of contacts, giving her a wide-ranging network made up of people from all walks of life. She was well-known as the go-to person if anyone needed anything. Then, one day during a conversation she and I were having, she dropped a bombshell . . . she said that her networking efforts weren’t really paying off for her. She went on at some length about all the groups she went to, all the people she met, and how she had made all these contacts and was continuing to make more all the time but wasn’t actually getting any solid business from her efforts.
Why wasn’t she seeing real results? Because despite her great talent for making contacts and gaining visibility, she was never really getting to the heart of what networking is about–building relationships. She was so busy running around and making appearances that she wasn’t ever learning how to actually “work” the networks she had built in order to build deep relationships with people and develop credibility with them.
It’s true that she was visible in the community–very visible, actually. The problem was that she viewed “activity” as an “accomplishment” when it came to her networking efforts. Her network was a mile wide but only an inch deep. She had not taken the next, and most important, networking step with the many, many people in her wide-reaching network–she never devoted the time to developing the kind of rapport with any of them that would allow them really get to know her, like her, trust her, and want to pass her business.
I bring this up because I just recently saw the same thing with someone I’ve known for a few years. He made a consistent habit of going to every single networking meeting/event he could go to and he was incredibly visible. Not only was he always at networking meetings but he was always full of energy and enthusiasm from the time he arrived to the time he left. Again, the problem was in no way due to a lack of activity, effort or enthusiasm in regard to putting himself out there and meeting new people; the problem was that he was running around so much that he never stopped long enough to spend the time necessary to establish the kind of long-term roots that lead to an ongoing, reciprocal referral relationship.
If your goal is to significantly grow your business, networking with your main focus being solely to make as many contacts as possible will not help you achieve your aim. If you’re networking in this way, you’re also guaranteed to get burned out on networking because constantly being on the go and trying to keep track of hundreds of people who you don’t really know is exhausting. There needs to be a balance between the visibility-creating aspect of your networking efforts and the credibility-creating aspects of your networking efforts.
What are your thoughts on the ideal networking focus/approach? What do you feel your main networking focus is currently? I’d love to hear your thoughts and, also, if you know someone with the type of hyper-visibility networking style I describe in this blog, please share what you’ve observed as far as their networking technique and how you think it has worked out for them. Thanks!
At a recent Referral Institute conference, I was talking with Tiffanie Kellog and Renia Carsillo, two Referral Institute trainers from Florida, and we were talking about the “Ten Commandments for Working a Networking Mixer.” To our surprise, we each share the same favorite when it comes to the Networking Mixer Commandments yet the reasons why it’s our favorite are quite different.
Tiffanie is an introvert, I’m a situational extrovert, and Renia is an introverted go-getter. However the “Act Like a Host, Not a Guest” Commandment provides unique solutions in making networking more comfortable and natural for all three of these personality types and in this brief video we discuss exactly how.
If you’re interested in learning about the Ten Commandments of Working a Networking Mixer, come back on Monday, October 1st to find out more. In the meantime, let us know what you think of this video. Are you more similar to Tiffanie, Renia, or me when it comes to your personality type? Are you going to try the tactic of acting like a host at your next event? If so, please revisit this page and leave a comment after your event to let us know how it went–we’d love to hear about your experience.
Last week, I was meeting with executives from the Referral Institute and Thomas Albrecht, Referral Institute Master Franchisee in Austria and Germany, brought up a really interesting concept about networking when he compared it to doing a Google® search.
I immediately asked him if we could record the topic on video for this blog because it’s a fantastic topic that I think will really resonate with networkers globally and it’s something I’ve never thought of before.
So, watch the video and let us know . . . have you been networking like you do Google searches? Leave a comment and let us know if your networking tactics thus far have been pretty on par with this strategy, or whether you’re going to remember the Google analogy and make some changes to make sure you’re networking efforts are more precise.