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Three Relationship Marketing and Networking Tips

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By D’vorah Lansky – Guest Blogger

Continuing on with our theme of in-person networking, today I am going to share with you three more tips for building relationships by attending in-person networking events.

  1. Bring Friends, Colleagues, and Networking Buddies with You to Events and Introduce Them to Others
  2. Develop a 30-60 Second Elevator Speech That Causes People to Say, “Tell Me More”
  3. Get Together With People Over the Course of the Month

 

Bring Friends, Colleagues, and Networking Buddies with You to Events and Introduce Them to Others

Take someone from your BNI Chapter to your Chamber of Commerce meeting and introduce them to someone in their contact sphere or introduce them to people whom you feel would be a good connection for them.  This will again increase your value and your likeability factor as well as make you an invaluable member of the business community.  You will also be helping people at the Chamber of Commerce event to broaden their contact sphere as you help to connect them to people in your BNI Chapter, for example. 

Bring your Networking Buddies with you to events but don’t hang out with them the whole time.  Visit with them, introduce them to people and then go and mingle and encourage them to do the same. 

Previously I gave the example of making a simple introduction between a Realtor and mortgage loan office.  Following is an example of how to make a much warmer personal introduction. Let’s use the same example of a Realtor but this time, provide a warm introduction.

If you are speaking with a Professional Organizer and you know that her best referral source is Realtors. You may want to introduce her to one or more of the Realtors in the room.  A possible introduction could go like this, “Lisa, hi, I know that you are a Realtor specializing in selling homes in this area.  I’d like to introduce you to my good friend Donna.  Donna is a Professional Organizer and she specializes in helping to increase the value of homes with her Home Staging Services.  I thought that the two of you might enjoy meeting one another for a possible mutually beneficial relationship.”  This can increase the services that the Realtor offers to her clients and this can create a great alliance between these two professionals. 

Again, you increase your value and what you offer to the community and you are deepening your relationships.  As an additional benefit to you, you will become more easily referrable as you will be on their radar and thus you’ll be able to grow your business.

 Develop a 30-60 Second Elevator Speech That Causes People to Say, “Tell Me More”

Rather than saying, “Hi, my name is so and so and this is the name of of my business and I do this, that and the other thing and we have great stuff and you should go to our website and buy our stuff.”  First of all, people will tune you out.  This is a situation where the “less is more” factor comes into play.  Rather than telling them everything that you do, share with them something that causes them to say, “Tell me more”.

I’d like to share a story with you told to me by my very good friend Sasha.  She was at a luncheon for Financial Planners and being the conversationalist that she is, she turned to the person to the right of her and asked them, “what do you do?”  That person went on to tell her all about their financial planner services in great detail.  Next, Sasha turned to her left and asked, “what do you do?”  This person said, “I show people how to get their children to buy them an island”. 

Which person would you be more inclined to ask to tell you more?  So, what can you say to get people to ask you to tell them more?  You may want to practice on a few friends and let them know that you are working on your 30 second commercial and that your goal is to get people to ask you to tell them more.  Ask them if they would listen to what you’ve come up with and then give you their honest feedback.

  Get Together With People Over the Course of the Month

Select two or three people that you’d like to get to know better and schedule a time to meet with them over the next few weeks.  It’s a best practice to meet with at least one person a week, outside of networking events.  Some people make it a practice to meet with several people a week for coffee or over lunch.  People may not have their calendar with them, so set a tentative date and find out the best way to reach them to confirm that you both have the appointment in your calendars.  You don’t want to leave it up to chance with a note on the back of a business card as it might not make it into their calendar.  Ask them what the best way to reach them is.  You can say, “If I send you an emai confirming our appointment, will you be able to get back to me or would it be better if I call you? 

These days many people prefer email as they can get to it when they have a moment, it’s right there next to their calendar and it’s easy to reply back to you.  When you do go out with them, don’t use that time to give a sales pitch, use this as a time to get to know them and find out about their hobbies. This will strengthen that relationship.  This is also a great way for you to get ideas for who you can introduce them to in your network.  This increases your likeability factor and the value you are adding to the relationship.

I hope that the seven tips I shared over the course of this week, were helpful to you. Please feel free to leave a comment, share an idea or ask any questions. Consider taking one thing that you learned and putting into action within one week. I’d love to hear about your results.

Here’s to your success!  Happy Networing!

D’vorah Lansky – Guest Blogger

M.Ed and Relationship Marketing Wizard
www.RealtionshipMarketingCafe.com

Three In-Person Networking Strategies

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Lansky_Dvorah-153x225A warm thank you to Reno for allowing me to be a guest blogger on your site this week. This is week two in my summer Blog World Tour and I am honored to be able to include Reno’s blog as a premier destination on this journey.

Earlier this week I shared with you a few tips regarding the power of utilizing your business card as a networking tool.  Today I would like to share three more in-person networking strategies with you.

  1. Arrive Early and Stay Late
  2. Mingle, Reach Out, and Circulate
  3. Listen More Than You Speak

To develop a well-rounded networking strategy, you will want to participate in in-person networking. In-person networking allows you the opportunity to be able to quickly connect with people. I’d venture to say that you’ve heard it said, people want to do business with people whom they know, like and trust. Let’s explore a few effective strategies for developing your “know, like and trust”  factor through in person networking

 1. Arrive Early and Stay Late

Arriving early allows you to connect with the organizers, the movers and shakers and greet people as they come through the door. You become familiar to them, because if you do this over time, you will become a known entity and a familiar face to people. You will also be able to build relationships by helping others build relationships. As people arrive, since you know who is already there, you can help make introductions. Let’s say that a Realtor walks through the door and you know that there is already a mortgage loan officer in the room and you think that there might be some good synergy there. That could turn into a good alliance and both of these people will be grateful to you for making this connection.

The reason to stay late is that you’ll get to network with the people who stay late. You’ll also become known to the chamber of commerce officers or the hosting organization as a person who gives and a person who can be counted on. In time, they may want to feature you in their newsletter, ask you to serve on a committee, or even have you as a guest speaker, which will put you in front of even more people. You become known as a go-to person, a person who networks and a person who is serious about their business.

 2. Mingle, Reach Out, and Circulate

When you attend networking events, focus on networking, mingling, and getting to know people. What you don’t want to do is spend the bulk of the time sitting and chatting with people whom you work with. If you arrive at the event with colleagues, make a plan with them to get to know new people and compare notes afterwards. You are there to network and meet other people. If you find yourself squirreled up in the corner with people whom you know, find a way to extract yourself so that you can mingle and meet new people.

When you are networking with new people there are a few things to consider. It is best to connect with fewer people and go deeper than it is to connect with more people on a surface level.

If you find yourself speaking with someone and there seems to be a good connection and you get a sense that continuing the conversation would be a good use of time, spend more time with that person. However, you don’t want to keep him or her from connecting with other people. You may want to check in with this new contact to see if he or she would like to continue the conversation or would prefer to circulate and perhaps get together for lunch or coffee later in the week. At that time you can take the relationship to the next level.

If you are in a group of two or three people and they are gossiping or speaking negatively or for whatever reason you don’t feel that there is good synergy, find a reason to extract yourself. You can simply say, “I’ve enjoyed our conversation. I’m going to go mingle; let’s connect up later.”  Then just politely remove yourself and find another group to connect with.

 3. Listen More Than You Speak

When you connect with someone, you don’t want to start the conversation telling them all about you and your products and then give them your card and tell them to visit your Web site. That person will throw your card away. Instead, when you connect with someone, ask them to tell you about themselves. You can say, “So, tell me about your business? Have you been in town a long time? Aside from business, what do you enjoy doing? If you could do anything with your time, what would you do?”  Find out about them because you might be able to make a connection for them. If, for example, they tell you that they love boating or sky-diving and you know someone on the other side of the room that shares the same passion, you can make a wonderful introduction. Then you’ll become known as a connector and this will be another way for you to add value. This will also deepen your relationships with these people because they will realize that you are not all about business but that you are also very committed to building relationships. Increase your likeability factor and become known as a person of value before you try to “get” business from your network. It’s more important to sell your network on you than on your product.

 Stay tuned as later this week I share three more in-person networking tips. Thank you Reno for having me as a guest blogger on your site and for participating in the Blog World Tour.

D’vorah Lansky, M.Ed.
Relationship Marketing Wizard
Join us on the Blog World Tour at – www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog