World Storytelling Day

I noticed on the BBC website that today is World Storytelling day. You often hear the expression 'people buy people' and illustrating your introduction with a story is a very useful aide in business networking. A quick story can give meaning to the information you are trying to convey.

For example I was talking with a member of NRG in London last week about the importance of building trusted relationships and how that can take time. He said that's so true and described how, almost imperceptibly, over the course of six or seven months he had built a pipeline of new business worth about £250,000.

Does technology rule you...

...or do you use it to support your business development activities? This is a great cartoon:

Go BIG for comic relief

Who do you follow up?

The benefits in business networking come from building relationships. If you're unsure where to start then you might want to arrange some 121 meetings based on the following criteria with a new contact:

• do I like them?
• are there points of contact (business or personal)?
• do I find them interesting?
• do I want to take this further (based on your initial conversation)

The Art of Listening

"Seek first to understand not be understood" is a quote I've heard a few times. It's Habit 5 from Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Listening is key to understanding, and is an important skill to be effective at business networking. Most of the time it's tempting to try and jump in and not really listen. Next time you meet someone on a 121 basis try and give them "a really good listening to" without constantly trying to think of something to say. That's a great phrase I first heard from Nick Heap. Nick's website >>> has some great practical resources.

Sharing your expertise

In some research that we conducted a couple of years ago one of the main findings was how business owners build trust. The key factors are "do I like them?" together with ability, and reliability. They have a range of strategies that they use to check out these factors in some depth over a period of time while building that all important trust. For instance they may well want to see you at work!

This can pose a problem in business networking. The network is your route to market so you need to have a strategy for sharing your expertise with someone unlikely to be your customer so that they get some experience of what you do.

You might do this in 121 sessions, public speaking, a 'free' consultation, a report, a blog or other ways appropriate for what you do.

Good Networking!
Dave Clarke

How To Educate a Community

Great quote from Frank Kanu's blog from an African proverb:

"When you educate a boy,
you educate an individual,
but when you educate a girl,
you educate a community."

Let's all learn from the girls.

NRG six rules of good networking.

Thanks to Mark Lee for sharing this in his blog here >>>>. He says they are great advice for his audience of ambitious professionals. A reminder of the rules:

Rule 1. Don’t network to network. Define your purpose. For instance, your purpose may be to find contacts who can open doors for you, to find people for whom you can open doors (you are less likely to get the former without doing the latter), and to hear the gossip on the grapevine.

Rule 2. Build your network before you need it. People can tell the difference between desperation and an earnest attempt to create a relationship.

Rule 3. Never eat alone. If you’re in a strange city, look up someone on our website who you’d like to meet and have lunch with them.

Rule 4. Ask for what you want. People might say yes!

Rule 5. Don’t keep a tally, so open doors for other people generously, time and again, without counting the score. What goes round, comes round.

Rule 6. Be there!

That's AMORE

I like this presentation tip acronym which originally appeared in "The MediaCoach", a free ezine produced by Alan Stevens, and available at www.mediacoach.co.uk:

A - Audience. The first thing you should consider. Who are they? What are they interested in? What will move them to take action?

M - Message. Your key theme, which should be brief, simple and relevant. Keep this in mind throughout your speech.

O - Opening. The first 15 seconds are crucial. Don't waste your time on pleasantries, get right to your message.

R - Recap. Hey! What happened to my speech? Well, that's the easy part. It's important that whatever you said, you provide a summary to reinforce your message.

E - Ending. The killer closing line that will hammer home your message and bring you a standing ovation.

With apologies to Dino, That's Amore. (Geddit?)

What sort of people attend the event?

I'm asked "what sort of people attend your business networking events" and usually ask "who are you looking to meet?"

I'm always amazed when someone says "The CEO/MD of a business employing at least 50 people as they are the sort of customers I deal with". CEO's of those businesses network with other CEO's. Networking is not selling and your aim should be to find networks where the attendees also supply your target market or where your best introducers are. Concentrate first on relationship building and your leads follow.