The Accidental Networker – Seeing Prospecting Opportunities Where Others Don’t Look
To meeting or not to meeting? And that is the question ……
© David Newton
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Has The Cult Of Conformity Blinded Us?
If you listened only to all the preaching about business networking meetings, you’d feel starved of opportunities by not attending one – but is that right?
It’s easy to be humbled and dulled into thinking there is only one pathway to enlightenment.
The high priests have given their sermons from the pulpit many times and the masses who follow them, almost without question and certainly without debate – they proclaim over and over again exhorting us to simply find a meeting to attend and bring your business cards and chat to the locals at such meetings.
However many more opportunities are there to build your business than just attending business meetings.
Your scope for building prospects is always bigger than you may think it really is. It gets down to being aware of what places and things you can do to grow your prospecting list and what actions you can take to maximize harvesting keen prospects and leads for your business on a timely basis.
Those opportunities can be broken down into several categories –
Face To Face Opportunities
These can be anything from meeting people at the supermarket to chatting with strangers at a café sitting next to you. Many “cold” meeting opportunities are available all the day long. I’ve even placed DL brochures at cafes where I go to as another way to gain great prospects.
Online Networking
A year ago I was stunned when a mate of mine told me sold a $5,000 consultancy package to a lady who connected with him via his FaceBook profile. She lived only two blocks away from him. This was the power of such a vital tool used these days to meet potential prospects.
Meetings You Attend
Yes, the old line of going out to meetings and “networking” or shall we say circulating is good. But you can take this a step further or you’ll never gain critical mass in meeting people. Even golf is still seen as a regular networking event in some circles. Meetings can take on many forms.
Meetings Where You Host And Invite Others
As much as 10 times better than attending events is the idea of running them outright. The so called networking gurus rarely ever mention this as they are too busy doing it themselves to pass on how they got all their leads and sales. I strongly suggest you to look at hosting your own business and social events as often and as soon as you can to build your leads base faster and longer lasting.
Publicity Events
You don’t have to promote a charity to run a publicity event. You can try almost any other thing on the menu, like asking a celebrity to attend, or making a comment about a new survey or better yet, promoting something controversial and yet topical for the media to pick up on. It can be as easy as asking to be interviewed by the media to get on the media.
Expert Interviews You Hold With The Media
If you’re appearing on the media regularly, they will begin to ask you questions like you’re an expert regardless of the news item or if it’s connected to your business. That’s when you have real power with the press. They rely on a lot of experts to make a news item easy for them to quickly put up on TV. You can with persistence be one of those people very fast if you do your homework and keep on their case. This helps make you famous and by that you ATTRACT people to you automatically.
Social Opportunities
Again, many social opportunities don’t have to be business related to give a networking result. Almost any activity such as a dinner outing or a trip to the local museum can be ideal for meeting people. You have to ask yourself if others will be there when I get there, let’s make sure I have my cards ready to give them.
Key People Dinner Or Coffee Meetings
One way movers and shakers get ahead isn’t always public. Behind the scenes they are meeting people all day long over coffees and lunches and dinners. I disagree with the line the lunch is for wimps. It’s simply not true. More deals are done over food than can possibly be dreamed of. Literally billions of dollars each day are traded over breakfasts, lunches, afternoon teas, all the way to the late night coffee and cakes at midnight. You can easily do this too.
Friends And Family Events
Prospects can turn up anywhere and some cultures have this as a backbone to start a business. It’s the opposite in our western culture of “I’ll get there by myself” attitude to think of asking friends and family to be introduced around as they fear seeing these people again if their business fails. Open your mind to other possibilities – you might be one connection away to a big sale by prospecting your closest network.
More Ideas
While this list isn’t exhaustive – it highlights that many social events are simply not always labeled as business meetings. At a business meeting, time might be limited, and sometimes people are on the defensive towards any apparent sales pitches. The one thing good about social business meetings are for is making new touch points.
Where I’ve found people in a real buyer mode is when they are doing fun things. As an example, with my own social groups (i.e. www.SydneyWalking.com or the www.TheSydneyGourmetClub.com ) where over many years of running meetings business owners who come along are in fact more talkative at my social events as they are out and about and having a good time.
Yet while in the scorched deserts of ambition – business people will listen to whoever steps up to the microphone. They will follow almost without contest doing exactly the same things as the crowds do. Then later when results don’t follow, they will either give up or be humbled again by guru clergy into attending yet more of the same meetings when they may have even had some accidental results outside of the norm in other area.