Do you have any friends working in sales? Is any of your friends a blogger? Count the amount of people you know who work with anything to do with technology. If you answered ‘YES’ to these questions or most of them, potentially you have a successful new company in your hands. More on connecting your connections in this post.
In this blog we dealt with how to built your network, and how to make it grow. Assuming you already have a network of considerable size, it’s time to make it work for you, and for your connections. A non-active network, won’t bring any value to your business. Connection won’t last – the next time you’ll need someone from your network you will have to start rebuilding your relationship from scratch.
The web is rich with ‘How To’ guides. I also read some of these articles and posts every now and then. You can probably find endless blog posts on ‘how to network ‘ online. I chose to publish here the first official ‘how to’ post to be on 5 things you should try NOT to do regarding your network. Remember, we all learn from mistakes, why not learn from others’ mistakes?
Don’t miss opportunities – When does that big opportunity come? You could never know. In order to avoid missing opportunities, there’s only one thing to do. Take part in activities related to your business and personal life as mentioned here before. Any occasion or person you meet, could easily become a great opportunity for a big client or a new contract, or finding the perfect candidate for a job your hiring for.
Then again, some meetings just bring up too many bad memories
Don’t force your business – Your product is great, I’m sure of that. But try to understand the event you’re participating in. Timing is everything (along with a good product,creative marketing and some luck…). Sometimes you might just have one opportunity to introduce yourself to someone relevant to you - don’t blow it. If you speak about your business in the wrong place, you might be considered rude and maybe even boring. From my experience, always introduce yourself first as a person, an individual. Don’t talk about your business straight away. People like to connect with people, not companies. Start by a short introduction about yourself. People will remember you but they will seldom remember a company name. If people will remember you it doesn’t matter which business it is, They would be interested in YOU.
In this post we will continue reviewing LinkedIn as part of our networking activities. Execpt for growing your connections on LinkedIn and joining groups, there is a lot more we can do to contribute to our growing network. Now, we will review how to connect to people we don’t know but would like to meet.
How to connect to unfamiliar people: LinkedIn is a great and fast way to connect to people you would like to do business with, but haven’t met before. Here are a few ways on how to do it.
First of all, I recommend as a prior step to get connected to all your existing connections as described in my last post: LinkedIn – Increase Your Networking. After doing so, the LinkedIn system will automaticly suggest people you might know, and can be used to connect to people you might want to know. This appears on the upper right side of your screen titled “People you may know”.
LinkedIn is a career focused network. I have been an active user for the last few years, and giving it more attention since I have become self-employed. In this post I’ll review some of LinkedIn’s advantages that have been effective for me.
Not everyone is your customer, and not everyone is network connections material. But they are all PEOPLE. In this post I would like to continue my last post about business networking and focus on network connections, and their part in your network of customers and business network.
This business has a great product, with a slight problem with customer support…
A lot of businessman are self-employed, which usually offer some kind of service. Unlike owning a store, usually customers wont bump into your business and buy something, Usually you would have an office somewhere or even be working from home.
You just opened up a new business. Best of luck to you!
Well, luck isn’t really the key for success here. A good idea is important, timing people will say is crucial, and of-course L-O-C-A-T-I-O-N (usually said three times). But is that all?
We think not.
As a partner in morethan one business I think one of the most important things is to let people know you have a business. It’s not that obvious: most people would think that they need to talk (or write for that matter) about their business only with customers and suppliers. This attitude could be the downside of your business, Let’s review this:
After mapping the first places to start your network, we can be creative on the next places to look at. The idea is that networking should be part of your day and spotting opportunities everywhere. If all this doesn’t make sense to you, that’s OK. In this post I’ll try to demonstrate from my personal experience and the people around me, which are naturally part of my network, how to establish first connections outside your family and friends.
The first thing to remember and to understand is you must be active and consistent about your growing network. This means that connections in most cases won’t built up by themselves. Let’s review the possibilities:
How active are you physically? Do you work out? jog? swim or cycle? If not, you should, and for more than the one reason. Put a side the obvious health advantages of being fit and the pleasure of it, taking part of any sport is a great way of getting to know people. In other words – establishing connections.
Everyone has a network. Not everybody knows it, and not everyone knows how to use it. In this post I’ll try to show how to map your current network as a first step to expansion in the future.
I believe that the base of every network, online or not, is the people around you. It doesn’t matter (and this is important) if your network is for business or any other purposes. You should always start with the people who know you and are in most cases fond of you.
Family – a lot of people have a hard time regarding to their family as part of their network, which is understandable due to the fact that most people are used to get a hot meal from their moms and not talk business. The funny thing is that in many cases family members can be strategic connections in your network. The advantages of family members are of a wide range. In some cases it could be your parents that naturally have years of experience in their field of work, or a sibling, an uncle or aunt. The family has two great advantages, they are very approachable when in need, and usually one can find a wide variety of professions in the family.
Of course there are families who network only in the family…
