I was at a business networking meeting this morning. It’s something I do fairly regularly, but recently I’ve been thinking about how to make sure it’s worth my while.
One of the problems with doing that is that there are a plethora of reasons one can have for going networking, and few of them are easy to measure.
I know several people who happily acknowledge that one of their main purposes in attending events is social. It gets them out of the house and stops them becoming total hermits who live in their dressing gowns.
Then there are the ones who say it’s to get their business ‘out there’. I’m not sure either of us know what they really mean by that.
Others say it’s their main mode of marketing, or that it’s where they get ‘most’ of their business. However, when you ask them to put some numbers on that – as in return on investment type numbers: How many events? How much do they cost? How many new clients? Time invested. Cost of client acquisition. etc. – almost none of them can.
Interestingly almost nobody tells me it’s part of a well thought out marketing strategy. Which is what it really ought to be. After all, regular networkers can spend a lot of money over the course of a year, although frighteningly few can tell you how much that actually is.
And I’m no better. Although I am starting to get more of a handle on all of it.
There a number of things I’m doing. They’re all things I already knew I should be doing, but until you start to approach networking more strategically it’s very easy to omit them.
- Working on being much clearer about who my ideal clients are and where they, or people that know them, are likely to be found – I’ve already discovered it’s often not at networking events!
- Measuring the time and money I put into it – this has already helped me cut the number of events I attend by more than half, and simultaneously increase the number of relationships I’m building!
- Making sure I follow up with the people I’ve met. This is an interesting one as when I was doing more networking I didn’t have the time (or inclination) to follow up with everyone.
- Developing a structure for nurturing all my business relationships (not just the new ones).
- Tracking people’s progress along the path towards becoming clients. As I get better at this it will help me refine steps 1 to 4.
I notice, even as I’m writing this, a mild discomfort with the idea that I’m deliberately moving people from being someone I’ve met into someone who’s paying me for my service. I suspect that idea may get in the way for many business owners. It really doesn’t need to. If you believe in the product or service you provide, what you are actually doing is helping people to benefit from something useful and valuable, and it’s only fair that you get paid for that.