I was speaking to a friend recently who told me she wasn’t meeting any new people to expand her community and that her business was stagnant. I found this surprising, because we live in New York City. There are millions of people here. And millions upon millions within a 50 mile radius so I asked her “where do you network?”
She named 3 groups.
WOW.
And amongst those 3 groups there are just 2 that have at least once-monthly meetings.
I told her the problem wasn’t those organizations, but that she simply wasn’t putting herself out there to meet new people. I don’t think networking is a time to hop into an event and try to “get” a client so much as to establish a trusting relationship with people who know other people that you can serve.
If you’ll recall, I have a 3-2-1 plan for visibility that I follow rigorously every month. The “3” part of that formula is three networking events each month. To make sure I’m always meeting new people I make sure that at least one of them is a group that I don’t frequent often. I have a list of 20 organizations that I can learn from and that have the type of people that my community thrives on. People like YOU.
Here’s what I’d like you to do if you think you’re stagnant in business too and if you’re needing to up the ante:
1) Make a list of 2o networking organizations in your region. Use Google, Meetup.com, Eventbrite, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other online directories to find this group
2) when you review the group, make sure they are having a meeting at least once every two months. If they are not having in-person meetings that often, make sure they have frequent online engagement, and an in-person meeting at least once a quarter. I found that organizations that don’t do at least this don’t have enough strength to build a community
3) Go through each of those organization’s calendars and book out your networking meetings for the next 2 months. That means you’ll have 3 events each month. Make sure at least one of them becomes your “recurring entourage”
4) Attend each event with a goal to really connect and build a relationship with 3 people. You only need 3 quality conversations to make networking work on your behalf. Have business cards for others that you meet, but BUILD with about 3.
5) Add your 3 new friends to your contact database, and start to build and follow-up with them within 2 days of the event. This extends the conversation and gives you an opportunity to really connect.
I’ve used this simple formula for networking for 3 years and I get clients out of the blue as a result of it. If you think there just aren’t any groups near you, think again. Look for associations, chambers, etc. and you’ll start to see opportunities to network and grow all around you.
-Beatrice
P.S. If you’re in the New York area and want to know who’s on my list of 20 make a comment below. If I get at least 10 responders below I’ll share my secret stash
Ok, so I’ve decided to start a new series called healthy branding habits. There are some routines in my business that I pick up on that “I” think other businesses should do. I’ve got some weaknesses. I’m sure I’ve got some bad habits. And I’ve got some really smart habits that no one taught me. I implemented them into my business as a result of awareness and growth.
I’m going to start sharing those habits with you right now and the first one has to do with tracking your numbers. If you’ve been part of the Brand Excitement community for a while now, or if you’re on our newsletter list you know I use Aweber to deliver my mass email notifications. One of Aweber’s weaknesses is in giving me a snapshot of unique results of my campaigns. I manually record the unique open rates of each campaign but started to get discouraged by the numbers.
So… I sat back and thought about this. What are my true numbers? do numbers even matter? In all transparency… My list is about 300 people, I have 8-12 active clients at any given time and from that I have a low six-figure revenue stream. Not too bad. So do I really need to stress when my “unique” number — that is, the number of people who opened the email vs. the number of times they open it — is less than desired?
I was discouraged… caught in that “number trap” and then I decided to do a little experiment. I downloaded the spreadsheets for the prior month of activity, grouped all of the people from each week into one column in excel, and then removed duplicates from the list. My rationale was, perhaps (or surely) some people open it only once every few weeks. So the actual number of people that I’m toiling to communicate with may actually be higher.
I did that… and I was right. Though my Aweber unique metric is only at about 20% of my list, that number, over the course of a month, is actually 42%! That’s twice what Aweber reveals.
So here’s the healthy habit I’ve incorporated into my number tracking: Each month pull your data and discover the number of people that responded to your campaigns. THEN, look at that list, engage with them on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Linkedin. You’ll be surprised how much more fulfilled you’ll be and how much your business will grow by focusing on the connection instead of the accumulation. So many people are focused on “growing the list” when people that actually do care to connect are in the palm of your hand.
Do you track your numbers? What have you discovered? Do please share with me so that I can develop some more healthy branding habits.