Lucy Milekovic (2nd from Right) and her fine team at Ultimate Business Solutions. She is always asking great questions, leading to great articles!
After a very intelligent discussion today with the brilliant Lucy Milekovic (from Ultimate Business Solutions) she once again inspired me to write an article in relation to business networking.
We are both massive fans of using Networking to help us both get clients and effectively market ourselves. She runs a Top Bookkeeping Agency and in addition to that, I have been very lucky to work with her. In lots of our work it has been developing approach and materials to really support the Marketing and Sales Effort.
A great point which I have discussed with her and many others is:
– Well I got to as many Networking Events as I physically can, how can I get more out of it?
The reality is that you can only go to so many networking events. If you have read some of my recent articles or Facebook posts, the other week I went to 8 x Networking Events (where I hosted 4 x of them). This is no exaggeration and quite an extreme week with lots of critical moments coming together (and seeing clients every day too!).
I certainly achieved a lot that week, but I am telling you – it was one exhausting run and not something you want to do all the time. I’ll drink to getting MORE out of LESS events and here are my personal 10 x Tips to achieve that:
1) Go there to Help: Goes without saying. Enter with the right mindset so people trust you fast!
2) Take with you Great Sales Materials: Just rocking up isn’t the answer these days. You want brilliant Sales Material that you can use to enhance your effort. You can pull up your Banner to give you room exposure, put your Sales Material on the Promotional Tables, Give them to people and make yourself look great.
3) A Tight Pitch: I have written many articles on this one, but have a really tight pitch so people know how awesome you are fast.
4) Book Meetings: It’s not so much the number of “Networking Events” per se you attend, but more the actual Meetings you book from that. If you can say get 2 x Personal Business Appointments booked per meeting instead of 1, you could have doubled your sales opportunities. Brilliant!
5) Bring Guests Along: Bring along guests to networking events. People see you helping out the group, the leadership will love you more (as we all want growing groups) and it makes you look better.
6) Demonstrate or Give a Sample: Like Lucy or myself, as we have very strong specialized advice we can give that in certain areas. If you are a physical product, can you give a sample? Something to prove you are awesome.
7) Sell Awesome Stuff: Your Ideas, Products and Technologies rock and you are improving them all the time. Yes!
8) Have an Objective: Don’t just rock up – go there thinking about what you are going to do and how you are going to do it.
9) Help the Organizers: In 4Networking, Team Members who volunteer and help out the group almost make more money than regular members. Why? People get noticed and like them.
10) Pitch what is relevant to the room: Really understand the room and pitch what is relevant to the room. For example, Lucy the Bookkeeper could probably pitch 300 different things, but when it comes to events she sticks to the amazing XERO platform. Why? It’s a HOT TOPIC and the room is full of her target market.
I trust that helps! There are way more aspects to business networking and these are my 10 x Top of Mind in response to Lucy’s intelligent questioning today. Also, if you love intelligent things – love you check out my Online Course “The Awesome Marketing Vault”, right here and Business Networking is a great module of that.
Thank you to Luck Milekovic for referencing her and thank you to YOU for reading my fine articles. Hope this helps and have a great day / night everyone out there!
No responses yet