A strong professional network can help you grow your business. You can acquire ideas of success from established business entrepreneurs. Try to always work on polishing your business networks as it will positively impact your brand. Building good business connections can also help you open doors that were closed.
Getting fresh avenues of opportunities by having connections with professionals related to your business is quite easy. You can even set up an online community of business owners, thereby connecting to a large number of professionals related to your industry.
Michael Giannulis gives guidelines on how to grow your professional network
Listed below are some tips that might help you give the necessary push to your business.
-
Make a noticeable presence
You need to get in touch with people related to your field and let them know about your presence and what you are doing. Using social media, face-to-face contact, and email to keep in regular touch with business associates is very important. It will help you to get registered in their connection, thereby helping you to get more work. Thus keeping your presence noticeable is highly important to carve a niche for yourself in any industry.
-
Attend online and offline business events
Trade shows and business conferences are excellent opportunities for your networking prowess. You can also build your network by attending local meetups organized by local institutions. Keep in mind that you can also get a hoard of networking opportunities online, try using different interfaces. By using online networking channels, you can connect with many professionals irrespective of their location.
-
Hangout with your field related professionals
You can go to cafes and bars where you can meet networking professionals related to your industry, casual encounters can help you get professional outcomes later. You can join social networking sites to get in touch with your business associates. Having casual contacts might also turn lucrative in the future.
-
Share your expertise
Try to use online and offline platforms to share your knowledge with people. It will help you grow much faster as it creates a positive impact on the mind of both consumers and other business associates. When you are helping a business professional, there are chances of getting back that favor. Thus it gives you an incentive to expect future favors later. It is a very effective mechanism to help your business grow-ten-fold.
You can even connect two business associates from your contacts; this will, in turn, strengthen your connections. The bottom line here is to help people in your contacts and thus get favors in return.
-
Listen then speak
In any business meeting, you should be a listener instead of trying to dominate the conversation. Building connections by listening to your business associates is an excellent tactic. People generally love to talk about their achievements so you should lend a patient ear to this.
This will help them connect with you, and you can also derive knowledge from their achievements and success stories. If you can help your associate with probable solutions it might build strong professional bonds.
-
Do not hesitate to Ask
It is the golden rule for any business to grow to ask for favors, feedback, and suggestions. You should never hesitate to express your views during business meetings. Your expression depicts your personality, and this might help you to sail through. Being expressive, when required, can make good business connections. Michael Giannulishas harped on excellent communication skills for the development of any business. If you can express well, you will do well in life.
-
Focus on long-term benefits
Exchanging business cards and making business connections might appear unimportant initially, but they help build a long-term relationship with the clients. You need to focus on mutually lucrative business deals; it should be beneficial for both the parties involved. Try to establish two-street connections with your contacts so that you can achieve long-term goals.
-
Use follow-up mechanisms
After returning from any business meet or conference, you need to get back to the people you have met. You can express your gratitude for meeting them through email to appear on their business radar. You can also diligently show your initiative to help them whenever required. These friendly gestures and follow-up emails can generate excellent business opportunities for you.
-
Stay up-to-date
It is not a hidden fact that the market is ever-changing. Therefore to bring in more customers, you need to know the problems they are facing. You need to come up with apt solutions to your potential consumers’ issues to keep your sales high. Knowing the pulse of the market is very necessary to remain in the business limelight.
-
Keep your spirits and morale high
Any entrepreneur must meet likeminded people. The optimistic views of some people can give you the necessary thrust to grow your business. Even if you are going through a difficult transition, some people’s views can help you understand their struggles and achievements.
- Clearly define your networking channels
You should not aimlessly chat at business events; instead, your primary focus should be to build relationships to derive more sales. However, you cannot directly jump into sales conversations. The very undertone of your conversation can have professional goals. You need to strike a meaningful connection with the people you meet at business events then you can add them to your networking funnel. Going straight away to your professional interests might offend the people involved in the conversation, making you appear opportunistic.
You need to develop those abilities that can help you forge instant friendships with people you meet irrespective of your background, age, etc. Instead of running from one event to another, you should go to the right events to meet the right contacts to establish proper networking channels. Here correct selection of the events to attend is important. Looking approachable is vital so that people would like to converse with you. Thus you need to make genuine connections that would head start your sale process.
