Business Networking and Sex - Ivan Misner [90]
2. Give. How much business have you given to others? I cannot complain about not getting business from a referral source if I am not giving business from that referral source. It is important that you track the referrals you have given to others and what was the result of that referral.
3. Receive. How many referrals or leads have you received from the group or individual? This is key. What have you received from the group or the referral source over the past year? How many referrals or leads have I received from a person in my network or a referral source?
4. Result. How much money have you made as a result of the leads and referrals you have received? This relates to item 3, Receive. I get a lot of leads and referrals from people, but which of those are closing and which ones are not really very good? You may find out that the people you are giving good business to are only retuning low level leads to you.
If you find that you are not getting the results you expected from a group or a person, then take a look at what you may have communicated to them. Go back and decide if you have not been clear in your communications about what you want or need, or have you hit the wall with a taker who is happy to take your referrals, but not so forth coming when it is time to give you referrals.
Women often do not go through this process of measurement because it feels to calculating. It is infringing on the relationships. I beg to differ with all the women who have told me this; this is business networking. Measure your results and then you can manage your time. If you are not getting the results you want you can stop, reevaluate, and change course if you need to.
REMEMBER: If your network is not working, there is no business happening, and it is your fault. As long as you remember that it is your fault and you take full responsibility for it, then and only then, do you always have the capacity to change it. If you are not measuring you will never know if it is working or not.
Our time is limited ladies, and our three-ring circus calls upon us constantly, we must measure if we are going to make good use of our time.
The Survey Says . . .
Effectiveness of Networking
We combined the answers to two questions to determine how effective a business tool networking actually is. One question asked how much time participants spent networking and the other asked what percentage of their business was derived from networking. Our analysis showed a linear correlation between the two factors. The more hours a person spent networking, the more business they derived from it. The correlation shown in Figure 8.1 is exactly that.
FIGURE 8.1—Percentage of Business by Hours Invested
Weekly Averages
It is important to note that the average (mean) weekly hours each survey participant spent on networking activities was 6.31. In other words, during a one-week period, people spent a little less than a full workday engaged in networking activities of some kind.
Interestingly, the majority of people who stated that networking did not play a role in their success (51.5 percent) spent two hours or less on networking! Clearly, those people who spent only a little time in the process felt that networking was not an effective way to build their businesses because just as in many other aspects of life, you reap what you sow. It’s no wonder the people who didn’t invest as much time also did not realize as much reward. This demonstrates the direct relationship between effort and rewards in networking.
The typical person in this survey generated 46.70 percent of all their business through referrals and networking activities. Men averaged 43.96 percent of their business through networking and referral activites and women averaged 49.44 percent of their