Business Networking and Sex - Ivan Misner [96]
Consider the investment of your time in networking as part of your marketing budget. Networking is about building relationships for future mutual benefit. It is a marketing activity. By putting your time into the marketing budget, you start to understand the importance of tracking because it now becomes part of the bottom line number you have to go after in order to be profitable.
• Go deep, not wide. I am sure you have heard over the years about how the TV and movie stars splayed on the covers of all the magazines and out with many people in the public eye tend to be home alone a lot. There are many people who network like this. They become very well known but have no real relationships with anyone in their network. So they have achieved their personal level of fame but they are not seeing any real benefit from it except being popular when they go out. We must be focused on developing the relationships in the network, not the size of our networks. Yes, men... you must be developing the actual RELATIONSHIP with the people in your network. It is important that we work in our network and not just on our network. Chances are you already know just about everyone you need to know to build a successful referral business, but you have not devoted enough time to go deep into your network. They say the average businessperson’s network consists of about 225 contacts—people they actually know and have some type of positive relationship with. So if you have about 225 people in your network and each of them have 225 people in their network, that means you are one generation away from a little over 50,000 people. How many more people did you say you wanted to meet? Always growing your network is great, but spend a greater amount of time developing the relationships you currently have but are at a shallow level. Automating your network with a database system will allow you to spend time working in your network, building deeper relationships. Good systems will allow you to do just that—go deep into you network.
• Manage your social media. Dedicate time to updating and managing your Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedln accounts (or whatever platforms you use), and to create fresh, interesting content for your blog. These are great ways to stay in touch with your network, develop conversation with them, and find out what they need.
One of my clients got seven new accounts by paying close attention to his Facebook page. His business focuses on disaster recovery, and during a time when damaging storms were raging across the state, he watched his Facebook page to see what his network was saying. He simply asked how he could be of help, and seven people hired him to help recover their homes.
She Says . . .
Systems Make a Difference
Of the 12,000 people surveyed, more respondents said they did not have a system than said they did have a system. More importantly, women said no, they did not have a system to follow up more than men did! It is easy to see that the more systematic you learn to make your networking the more productive you are going to be. Male or female, having a system is key to success. For women this can really be a major key for them.
Women have fewer hours to actually spend networking. They have to balance family responsibilities from getting kids off to school in the morning to getting them to their after-school activities, home for dinner, and off to bed. Add to that all the other activities that they need to take care of in a given day and there is little time for networking. Having systems to follow up and stay in touch allows for more productive activities and results from your networking activities.
When we asked the questions: Do you have a system for follow-up? Do you track the business you get from networking? Do you have a system for staying