Business Networking: Why Get Leveraged?

Life-long relationships are built through client-centered marketing programs.

There are three reasons for every networking relationship:

1. Grow market share
2. Create Relationships
3. Collect Information

Growing Market Share - The most important reason you will have with every networking relationship will be to grow your market share by finding people ideally targeted to your special business. Most people think the real reason for networking is to build a word-of-mouth reputation. Creating relationships is very important, but quality is more valuable than going wide in giving leverage to your network.

Find people who are already successful in a supporting industry and who are in a profession that has a need to be in contact with large numbers of the type of people you would like as clients. Successful business people usually have large networks and have a need for knowing someone who can educate them and solve their client’s problems. For example, if you are marketing to first-time home buyers; what service can you bring that provides a better, faster, and easier solution to support networking partners?  Discovering a solution to their needs is foremost, leveraging you as an expert and delivering more sales.

In today’s marketplace there is deep fear from experiencing a “Recession” and why some people are worried of not having any new business come in the door. On a phone call with Ivan Misner he said “in the last 100 years there has been 20 recessions. The last two recessions have been six years apart”. The economy is going through a contraction phase and reorganizing. There is nothing to fear and we simply need to be more creative in our approach to marketing.

Creating collaborative marketing campaigns of working together as marketing teams will reduce advertising costs. Working together on advertising campaigns can save you money and build a creative team atmosphere. To find out how to start a marketing team in your area with 4 to 6 businesses working together I suggest visiting http://www.PowerReferralTeam.com. In corporate America 70% of large businesses have some form of partnership and collaboration in place. To be strong in our economy we need to work together and build a stronger country.

Finally, the more contact a person has with your target networking group, the greater the chance they will also come across someone with a problem you can solve.

Creating Personal Relationships – Growing your network will introduce you to a lot of new people. If you have been very selective about whom you meet, they will have a high likelihood of building your business quickly. Remember to think about growing your business deep with more time spent on quality relationships than wide with less time spent with lower producers. From among this group of new leveraged partners, you must now select the ones with whom you would most like to grow a relationship.

The people with whom you create personal relationships should have three premier qualities:

1. Referral source
2. High degree of ethics and integrity
3. Strong mutual bond

Always know you are going to want to grow the value of their business with education and solutions. If you are not convinced they will produce new referrals, cultivating these relationships will waste your time. Don’t waste your effort with these “taker-types” who are not aligned with your goals and who are looking for free lunches and gifts.

The final word is caution. No matter how good a leveraged contact you think a person is, if you don't like him or her, don't go any further. If you do, you will always be untrue to your personal values. When you are building a network of friends rather than a network of business contacts, you will enjoy the pleasure of friendship with long-lasting clients that you enjoy being with.

Once you have located a leveraged network relationship you should give him or her plenty of attention, just like courting in a new lover. The likelihood of a networked partner referring clients to you is mostly related to his or her view of the longevity of your relationship. Their belief of a perceived long-lasting relationship is extremely important to both of you. Maintain a regular system of staying in contact through periodic arranged visits, calls, and value-added marketing pieces. If you want to build your market share from your network, you will want to build and maintain more friendships.

Ongoing Networking

Success is the result of the systematic application of actions that produce results that are aligned with your commitment. Leveraged networking is a high probability action that you can incorporate into play for low costs and high returns. You must provide high value and a belief in growing long-term client relationships. You must provide consistently and religiously each week an attitude to networking that builds on itself for it to be effective. If you meet two new leveraged relationships per week, and create relationships with only half of them, at the end of one year, you will have 52 new friends with a high likelihood of sending you more referrals. I have found that a systematic leveraged networking program has transformed my business client’s into hundreds of thousands of dollars in new sales per year. And now, most of their networking effort is just staying in touch with business friends.