I listened to an excellent teleseminar today by Sue Clement of SuccessCoaching.com. Sue gave some great tips on how to Socialize your way to More Clients and Cash Flow. When I first read the topic, I thought the seminar was about Social Media. But I was thrilled to be reminded of the good reasons to attend local networking events.
This teleseminar was broadcast on the web so I didn't get any long distance charges. I also had the option of listening via Skype. Sue talked about these topics: How to make connections to bring in more prospects, How not selling at networking events will get more clients and How to evaluate which networking events to attend.
1. The first step is to be prepared to answer the question, who is your ideal customer? Anyone who needs a website. Well, that is so broad that no one comes to mind. People will not be able to give you referrals. Paint the picture of what your ideal customer is like. What problems do you solve for them?
I help small businesses to promote their business online by creating attractively designed websites to keep customers coming back. I also build websites with blogs, forums and online chat. I help people with setting up their email newsletters and mailing lists to keep in constant contact with prospects.
2. Be prepared to give a 2 minute introduction answering the questions, what do you do? If you say I'm a web designer or massage therapist, people will lump you in a category depending on their past experience.
For myself, I help business owners to promote their business online. But lots of people do that. So what makes me unique? I'm looking for business owners who want to be able to manage their own website content. I can convert their static websites to Drupal so they can add and edit their own content on their own time.
I'm also looking for business owners with existing Drupal websites who need a new design or to add new features to improve their success of gaining new clients through their website.
3. Ask questions and listen. Take the work out of networking and enjoy meeting new people and find out about their passion and their business. Not just what do they do for business, but what are their favourite hobbies and interests. Favourite vacation getaway. The purpose of networking is not to hunt for new prospects but to make new connections. Ask people for connections. If you meet a realtor who knows several mortgage brokers, ask them to make an introduction. even if you just met them and are not comfortable giving a referral, you can say I just met Ms. Smith and she is a mortgage broker.
4. Follow up, follow up, follow up. Build on the connections you made at your networking events and send personal emails and mention something that you talked about in your conversation. Send them a link to a resource that you found online that will be helpful to them. Send them a free copy of your e-newsletter with the option to subscribe. Be sure to get their permission first before you add them to you monthly mailing list.
5. What networking events should I attend? There are hundreds of events happening all over the Greater Vancouver area. Keep track of the people that you met at each event and write down how many people subscribed to your newsletter, how many you had coffee with and how many people gave you a good referral. And of each referral, what was the outcome? Evaluate the results and choose your next months networking events accordingly. You also want to target the groups that cater to your target market.
Anyways, I learned a lot from Sue Clement's teleseminar on Socializing your way to More Clients and Cash Flow. For more information, visit
www.sueclement.com.
