Networking Articles (Brenda's BLOG)

One of the mistakes I often see small business owners make is that they stop networking when they get busy. This can be a critical mistake for two reasons:

First  - are you at a stage in your business where you know that you have all your pipelines in place to keep your sales funnel full at all times?  If not stopping networking just because you are busy right now can be a fatal error.  It takes time and consistency to get a steady flow into your sales funnel. You will be constantly dealing with peaks and troughs and droughts and floods if you do not consistently work at getting permanent reliable marketing pipelines in place. What better opportunity to do that than at networking events where you can focus on finding the RIGHT people and creating the RIGHT alliance strategies so that you need never worry about where your next customer is coming from again. Don’t network to find customers, network to create your “marketing and sales team”.

Second – congratulations – you have the alliances in place which form your sales and marketing funnel – new leads are flowing in at a steady pace and you know that you will never be short of new customers again.  So what are your business objectives now?

You should be constantly reviewing your networking plan in line with your business objectives.  So now you are busy – you have all the customers you need and you aren’t worried about where the new ones will come from.  Are you making enough money?  Do you have enough free time?  Are your staff happy? Would you like to increase your average dollar sale or the number of purchases a customer makes from you?  How loyal are your customers?  Whatever it is you are focussing on in your business strategic alliances can help you get there faster and easier!  Don’t try to be an island, look for the people that can help you achieve your objectives, then find out how you can help them in return.

This can be a fantastic way for mature businesses and new businesses to work together.  The new business offers their services to the mature business as a GIFT to pass on to their best customers or their staff.  The gift is seen to come from the mature business building customer and staff loyalty.  The new business gets a stream of potential customers actually walking in the door and trying their products or services.  If they treat them right then they will come back. If your offer is irresistible enough you can count on the mature business paying the cost of promoting the offer – after all how good does it make them look!

So think about it – what are your business objectives right now and who could help you achieve them?  Be prepared to think outside the box!

And here is my case study for this week.

A real estate agent creates a gift pack of goodies from a number of businesses in the local area in which she works. These include a car service; a free family size pizza; dinner for two at a local restaurant; a bottle of wine to be collected from the local bottle shop; a free hair style; a 2 hour garden makeover and a 2 hour house clean. (She also includes a voucher for a babysitting session when the family has small children.)  She only works with businesses who are prepared to give her complete gifts NOT discount vouchers  - this creates the irresistible offer which guarantees an extremely high level of uptake. The businesses who are involved understand the lifetime value of their customers and have calculated their customer acquisition costs.  WIN WIN WIN!