Marketing Expansion Through Networking for Small Businesses
Author: Referral Network
If you own a small business, expanding your market through networking is essential. It can help you influence the small business community in ways that will benefit both you and them. Ultimately, it will establish you and your business as a formidable competitor, a success and a reputable place for solid information and solutions.
How It Works
Can you count the numbers of people, customers or otherwise, that you speak to daily? If you take the time to keep track, you may be very surprised. The reality is that each and every person you communicated with today was an opportunity waiting to be captured. Did you use every opportunity today or did you pass most of them by?
Networking is for your small business, a critical part of your daily and overall method of establishing, nurturing and growing your business. Your influences within your industry and your business community will growth incredibly quickly if you use all the networking opportunities available to you.
Sales people understand this concept best. Every person is a potential customer. In fact, you should view every person as a potential customer and/or client. You influence sphere is the expansion of marketing that is done by word of mouth. It spreads the influence of your name, your company name, your company's reputation and your company's products and services to people you have not yet met. In fact, it is like building a snowball. As you start the ball rolling, the first layer of snow represents those that you personally meet and speak to. As they communicate with others, a second, a third and other layers are formed, making the snowball bigger and bigger each time.
Following Up
You may well have the networking first step memorized by now and be very good at it, but after creating your contact list, do you follow up? The fact is that many small business owners fail themselves and their businesses by not moving onto step two and following up on their networking opportunities.
The reality is that all the talk in the world will not make your small business grow or have an influence. You have to move onto step two and cultivate the seeds that you have sewn. Those seeds represent the people that you influence daily by letting them know about your business.
Cultivating Networking Seeds
Cultivating networking seeds is imperative for your small business. You should create two sections in your list, the contacts that are long-term and regular and those that are short-term and irregular. For example, if you have a customer who sees you daily then they are a regular, but if you have another that you may see infrequently, or rarely, then they are irregular. It simply translates to mean that your regulars are the most easily influenced of all of your customers. These people may well not buy very often or rarely, but you have the most contact with them and thus they are your best sources for referrals.
Cultivating Business Network Seeds
The people you make contact with daily in business are also those worth cultivating as your business network seeds. You can influence them most of all because you can actively share expertise and referrals within and outside of your immediate business industry. You can do this by doing seminars about your business or voluntarily submitting trade articles to your local industry journal.
By trying different methods and cultivating your business network seeds in these ways, you can greatly influence beyond your own industry. Another way to do this is to get involved with general business networking events. Many of these events are directed at businesses from varied industries. Many trade journals, your business trade associations and your local chamber of commerce readily keep calendars of such events.
Conclusion
If your small business is something that you really value then you will take strict advantage of all opportunities to meet and talk about your business. No matter the form that they may take, you will find that with practice you can effortlessly and happily expand your small business network and influence throughout the business community, within your industry and outside of it. Best of all, you will develop lasting and solid business relationships and contacts that with careful nurturing, will last a lifetime.
Last_modified 01/22/2010 23:15:06