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Brick No108: A third way to network
By Matt Weston, Tuesday 2 November 2004 Subject closed I've finally cleared the logjam of emails I received from business advisers in reply to last Tuesday's brick. (Subject closed by the way). The (trumped up) charge was that I'd tarred all business advisers with the same "bureaucrats" brush. I said that "rightly or wrongly" small business owners have an inbuilt scepticism to taking advice from people they see as being on the "other side of the fence". But this was the real agenda: That bodies like Business Link and the Federation of Small Businesses (with its 185,000 Members) should help small businesses tap into advice from"the same side of the fence" . . . from other small business owners. For me, the jaw-drop figure in the recent FSB survey was that only 28.7% of small business owners (or FSB members at least) sourced advice from "the same side of the fence". My first take: An almighty plug for our two-dozen local meet-ups (from Canterbury to Lewisham to Manchester to Glasgow) and for our first national meet-up on Friday 19 November 2004 in London. My second take: A realisation that (despite the fact over 100 of you have registered for London so far) not everybody "gets" networking . . . and that, as Brits, we seem to have an inbuilt misconception that networking means a joyless evening of hard-selling and being hard-sold to. And my job, today at least, is to correct that misconception. Only two ways to network? Most people go about networking in one of two ways: (a) You give it the hard sell. As Jay Levinson and Seth Godin put it in "Guerrilla Marketing for the Home-Based Business": " We know an insurance salesman who gets into crowded elevators, announces "Thank you all for coming to this meeting," and begins handing out business cards. " This is the way of the sledgehammer. You judge the success of your evening by how many people you manage to sell to. But the problem is that this figure is usually zero. (b) You give it the soft sell. George Bernard Shaw once wrote: " If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. " This is the way of Win/ Win. (I make no apology for the Gervais-ism, see Brick No30.) Your evening hinges on how many in-depth, two-way conversations you have. You build relationships, and you share ideas. But if you can't at least see a "sale in the pipeline", you cut short the conversation. The third way Sure, (b) beats (a). But there is a third way: (c) You connect other people. Instead of collaring immediate sales or building sales in the pipeline, you forget the sale and focus on adding pages to your little black book. People use networking to sell, whereas networking by definition is simply about building a network. If all you do at networking events is talk to people you can sell to, your network won't grow. You'll spend your life chipping away at the few people who match your target market exactly. The third way is (1) to soak up and understand as many businesses as you can, and add them to your little black book (2) to magic-up goodwill by making useful introductions and referrals between business people in your network. An example: A few months ago, via one of our local meet-ups, I introduced a graphic-designer to a telemarketing specialist. I couldn't sell to either (and they couldn't sell to me), but by introducing them they both saved hundreds of pounds. Said graphic-designer designed letterhead, logo and business cards for said telemarketer . . . and in return he gave her two days of much needed sales training. Since then I've helped introduce business to both, long-term contracts via other people in my little black book. This third way is the way of Win/ Win/ Win. Both your contacts win, because they get new business. And you win, because what comes around goes around. As you grow your network, you generate more and more goodwill. Here that goodwill has already materialised. I've landed business in return, and two of my most generous donors. Remember to sign up: back to top |
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