Smarter Networking

Ten years ago or more there was a well known phrase that was used among business owners and individuals which was: It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Today, owning and operating a franchise of any kind requires you to go beyond this, if you are to continue to create and maintain the “top of mind” awareness among peers, associates and the larger local marketplace. Networking today now goes beyond who you know….. 

It’s all about who knows you!

For much of my business life I have known the importance of networking. Although I knew the importance of it, I avoided networking as much as I could in the early days, and back then always described myself as a poor networker. The thought of going to a networking event created more nerves in me than meeting my mother in law, and literally scared me to death. I have always been a very confident person, passionate about what I do and believe 100% in what I and my company stands for, however unsure of how to start conversations, trying to overcome the fear of rejection and not knowing exactly what I was supposed to do once I met someone and got their business card, kick started a journey of learning the secrets to successful networking.

I have been described as a great networker by many of my associates and now with more tools in my toolbox, networking is something I look forward to rather than something I shy away from. The most important thing I focus on is making networking as efficient and effective as possible, ensuring I get maximum results in a short amount of time.

Let me share with you some great tips that have helped me along the way.

Networking is about building relationships.

Networking currently accounts for 87% of business in the marketplace. Yet many people neglect networking and fail to see it as a vital business and career building skill. Networking should be part of your daily, weekly or monthly activities just like any other business development activity you currently undertake.

Anyone can network with the exception of those who just don’t like people at all.

Referral marketing is the best way to build your business.

 

Networking Well

Your approach to networking is just as important as what you actually do. Starting with the right attitude and with minimum expectations will help you start off on the right foot. Like anything the more practice you do, the better you will eventually get.

For networking to work I have learnt that it’s important to do these three things.

  1. Prepare
  2. Connect
  3. Strengthen

If you’re not getting the results you want from networking, first check that you’re really doing all three of these steps properly, then work on ways to maximize your results within each one of them.

Prepare

Before you even shake one hand, it’s important you prepare yourself, both mentally and verbally.

This one is about your attitude about networking, your mindset.  Always be upbeat, positive, enthusiastic and realistic.

Making Connections- Introducing Yourself

Once you’re prepared, you’re ready to start making connections with people and there are multiple ways to do that. It all starts with introducing yourself.

You will have a limited time to get your message across so it’s important to create an introduction that will grab peoples’ attention enough for them to remember you. Not only do you require the skill to accurately describe who you are and what you’re looking for, it’s important to say it in such a way that other people can understand it enough to be able to tell others.

How to Introduce Yourself

Remember, you’re not going to make the sale and close the deal with your introduction. All you can really do is capture enough attention and interest to keep the conversation going. So stick to the basics and keep it short. You can go into much more detail after you’ve gotten someone’s attention, when they ask you for more information. But to get there, you need to get across three things first:

  • Your name (and company name if appropriate)
  • Your specialty and its benefit (how it helps the person hiring you)
  • And your target (who ideally you would like to speak with)

Unless you are a natural networker, networking can seem like alot of work.

Consistent efforts will eventually produce results.

Strengthen

Networking doesn’t stop there. Once you’ve made those initial connections, the next thing you have to work on is strengthening them. The best opportunities come from people who know you, trust you and like you. It’s difficult to get to that point after a 5-minute conversation at an event. You need to follow up and meet with contacts offline, then you have to stay top of mind.

Be sure you collect as many business cards as possible

 as the networking event is just the beginning!

Following Up

Events are good for the initial connection, but you have to build on that. You don’t have to follow up with everyone you meet, but there are three easy categories to focus on:

  1. Follow up with anyone who could be a client. That’s a no brainer.
  2. Follow up with people who are in your target space, maybe they’re in your field, but don’t do what you do. Or they target the same target audience. Perhaps you can help each other out
  3. Third, you may want to follow up with anyone who just plain impresses you. It’s good to know those kinds of people and have them in your network.

Get a business card. The best way to do this is to combine it with a conversation ender like mentioned earlier. Say “By the way, before I go, can I have your card?” Then email them the next day. Say you enjoyed meeting them and wondered if they’d like to get together for a coffee to learn more about each other and explore ways to help each other out. Position meetings this way you will find no one ever says no, because the meeting is about the two of you and not just about you. That’s important to remember when you’re asking for meetings.

Remember, you need to follow up with people if you want to build a relationship with them. Speaking to them for 5 or 10 minutes at an event is not enough time to form a lasting bond. Until you follow up and meet one-on-one, you’ll just be a business card to them and not a real person.

Key elements of a Good Networker

A Good Networker:

  • Has two ears and one mouth.
  • Asks questions and gets to know the other person.
  • Gives without expectation
  • Has an aim to add value
  • Has an abundant mindset- there is plenty of business out there for everyone.
  • Can form meaningful relationships and communicate their ideas.
  • Carries business cards at all times

Tips for Successful Networking

  • Limit your memberships to two or three groups. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Maximize your experience by going for depth of involvement.
  • Attend meetings and events regularly. Build a base of support with regular members and position yourself with new members as someone in the know.
  • Build great bridges! Every day people are missing chances to do business, largely because they don’t take the time to build a relationship with or even get to know the person.
  • Listening and asking more questions.
  • Arrive at meetings and networking events at least 15 minutes before the actual starting time
  • Introduce yourself with your name and the company you are from
  • Ask about the person first and listen intently. Most people want to talk about themselves.
  • Make sure you get as many business cards from all those you meet
  • Speak with one person at a time or at least a small group of no more than three
  • End conversations gracefully
  • Make sure you follow up with the contact soon after the event
  • Do something with the cards you collected…..put them into your database
  • Always thank people for sending referrals
  • Manage your time well

Making Continuous Improvements

When I first started networking to build my business, my efforts were slightly unfocused. I spread my memberships across a numerous organizations, rarely attending more than one or two meetings, if that. I’d attend random networking events because friends had invited me. In hindsight, all of those activities were necessary to help me build my skills and understand how to network smarter today.

With networking, I’ve found that it’s not the one big event that changes the course of a business. It’s the small steps that are taken consistently.

Think of all the steps you’ve taken, along many different paths to connect with all the different people now in your network. Some of those paths led to business, to friendships, and some have yet to reach a destination. Take one of these 5 steps listed below, down one of those unfinished paths, and see where it may lead

1) Make that follow up call.

2) Forward an article.

3) Warm up an old connection.

4) Spend more time with one of your networking groups.

5) Find someone in your network to collaborate with.

Strive for continuous improvement in your networking.  One small step for you could mean a giant leap for your business or career.

 

4 Simple Ways to Build Consistent Success

If you are like most business owners, you are striving to do things better this year. You want to make more money, you want more bottom line profits and I can also probably guess you want all this and more without having to work longer hours, with less overwhelm and zero headaches.

So how do you build a more efficient and consistent business? Well the answer to that question is quite simple. It’s about doing the right things in the right order and taking consistent daily action.

Here are 4 areas you can focus on quite effortlessly to ensure you build more momentum over the next 12 months.

Create your outcomes

Now I’m sure you are all familiar with the tradition of goals setting. We follow the smart criteria we learnt in our management and business training and then we hope that when we review those goals we have achieved them. Well if you want my honest opinion, for the majority, goal setting just doesn’t work. It’s a bold statement but true. Your focus should be on achieving your goals not just setting them, so that’s when I changed the acronym to SMARTA to include that all important element – ACTION. Unless you take the required action, your goals will simply remain your wishes and desires. So how do you CREATE your outcomes so you can move closer to where you want to be? As Peter Druker once said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

The first step is to decide what you want. It may sound simple but most don’t even get this far. I believe success starts with a decision. Regardless of whether you have small or big goals you must decide what you want.

How you write down what you want is very important so as you begin the first step of wiring down your goals, make sure your outcomes meet the CREATE criteria

C- Clear and concise in other words be specific about what you want to achieve

R – Realistic Remember we don’t – get what we want, we get what we expect. So set your outcomes in alignment to what you expect you can achieve. Once you start achieving your goals, stretch your expectations and yourself.

E- Ecological – running an ecology check on your goals is always a good idea. This simply means looking at the consequences of attaining that goal. You may ask yourself, is this outcome good for me and good for others etc.

A- As If Now – it is vitally important you write your goals in the present tense. This is because once the mind has fully imagined something, it makes it far easier to accomplish. So your goal must be written in the present-tense language, as if you are achieving the last step right now in this moment.

T-Timed and Toward What You want – even though you are going to write down your goals in the present tense, you must put a future date or time to your goal to indicate when you wish to achieve this outcome.  The T also stands for toward what you want; this just means it’s important to express your goal positively rather than including negative language about what you don’t want.

E- End Step – evidence Procedure – always include the final step that lets you know you have actually achieved your goal. This is the event, situation or result that would occur in order for you to have attained your outcome. 

Take Consistent Daily Action & Improvement

They say success is in the follow through and therefore Action is an essential element to success, but how do we maintain that action on a daily basis and focus only on the high income and high impact activities that will help us move to achieving higher levels of success.  The average person over estimates what he or she can do in a day, a week or a month, and they under estimate what they can do in a year, five years and a decade.

Most of us associate action to taking big leaps and bounds which is not always possible to maintain every day. So to get started with building more consistency in your efforts, try focusing on achieving consistent daily improvement. We all think we have to improve by 20% or 50% or 100% in one leap. Why not make the decision to commit to improving your business, your sales, how you interact with your customers, your staff etc. in fact everything you do, by only 1% – but do this every day. At the end of every year you will be at least 3665% improved in many areas of your business and your life. Think about how much closer you will be to achieving your goals and outcomes if you are achieving those kind of results consistently.

Develop a prospect mindset & keep them for life

When you develop a “prospect mindset,” you’ll begin to understand what your customers want… specifically. You’ll understand how to clearly identify the problems, frustrations and concerns they typically experience when they buy what you sell. These frustrations, concerns, problems and fears are what we call HOT BUTTONS.

If you can discover what your ideal customer wants, and then provide them with solution to their wants, they will buy from you each and every time.

Once you completely understand how and why human beings make decisions, you can then begin to create persuasive and compelling marketing messages that are so powerful they practically force your prospects to buy what you sell.

Become an Automatic Smart Networker

Though it may be hard to grasp, networking is much easier than you think. Forget the myth that

you need to be an extrovert to network well. You don’t. Or that you must network nonstop.

Absolutely not. Or that networking is all about working the room at a big event with a big fake

grin plastered on your face. Far from it.

You might be waiting for a bolt of confidence to strike before you get up enough courage to put

yourself out there, but confidence doesn’t magically appear. Instead, confidence comes partly through knowledge, being able to see what the process looks like, trusting yourself and taking a deep breath and plunging right in. It also comes from knowing what to say to people when asked …”what do you do”

In short:

AVOID Telling People WHO You Are

  • I’m an accountant
  • I’m a plumber
  • I’m a florist
  • I’m a business coach

Tell People WHAT You DO & Show Them How Your Solutions Matches Their WANTS!

  • I help people become financially successful
  • I help people with all their plumbing needs
  • I bring joy and happiness to peoples day
  • I help business owners get more from their business

Once you have the experience of communicating this well and find that networking is not so daunting after all you will wonder why you ever waited so long to get started

Remember you must network the smart way which will include both face to face networking and online social media. Not enough people view social media as a form of networking, but it’s a must if you want to leverage your opportunities through your connections.

Smart networking

ü  Is driven by purpose. It starts by defining your goals. These goals should then determine whom we ought to have in our network, which in turn, should help us decide where best to meet them. This means you are just not wasting time at the wrong events or in following up when it’s not the right fit.

  •  adds value and removes pressure as it places a deliberate focus on the needs and feelings of other people first.
  •  leverages tools that multiply our productivity. Rather than meeting people and interacting with them one-to-one, smart networking takes advantage of online tools and services that help us reach people on a one-to-many basis.

Time to Take Action

Remember success in in the Follow Through so take some time right now to

  • Decide what you want & create your outcomes for the year.
  • Commit to consistent daily improvement
  • Match your solutions to your customers wants
  • Become an automatic smart networker

Finding the right franchise

Founder of Grill’d Healthy Burgers, Simon Crowe has announced ten tips that potential franchisees need to keep in mind when searching for the right system.

“The franchising world is fast-paced, dynamic and full of incredible opportunities but there’s a lot of choice out there so you really need to do your homework and search for the right business fit,” Crowe said.

Crowe’s top 10 tips to help find the right franchise
1.    PEOPLE – are everything. Finding the right people to join the Grill’d family is the most important part of the business. We agree that the customer is king but you need the right people on board to treat the customer like a king. Potential franchisees must be a perfect cultural fit and share the same passion.
2.    BE PREPARED – to go through a rigorous interview process. Maintaining the Grill’d point of difference is paramount.
3.    GET SERIOUS – Going into the franchising industry is not a decision to be made lightly. The set up costs are substantial and you have to be confident that it’s the career for you.
4.    RESEARCH – Do your homework and read up on the company you want to buy into. Fees will vary greatly from business to business but you need to be aware of what you could be up against.
5.    CONFIDENCE – Have confidence. You need to have confidence in the business model as well as the people leading and managing the growth and direction of the business.

6.    ADVICE – Seek out and follow the advice of people already in the business. Make sure you talk to existing franchise owners in the business.
7.    BRAND – Verify values and culture of the business you are looking into. Visit a number of the franchise outlets and take notes about the things you like and don’t like about them. It’s important you believe in the brand.
8.    PATIENCE – Wait for the right opportunity and don’t jump into anything that doesn’t feel 100 percent right. This includes waiting for the right property, partner and business.
9.    ASK QUESTIONS– Is the business profitable? Ensure you speak to existing franchisees in the business you are looking to buy into because it’s important to hear about their personal experiences/challenges firsthand.
10.    LOOK FOR GROWTH – Is the franchise in a growth area? Identify the life cycle of the franchise and look for proven results.