The average business owner carries around enough wisdom and “famous onliners” to fill a book. Whether any of them apply that hard won knowledge is debatable. Very few do of course. One old adage is “it’s not what you know but whom you know” or a more recent example “it’s not who you know but who they know”. Well in these days of online social networking who you know and who they know is becoming a top draw business ingredient once again. This modern variation on a tried and tested theme finds large corporations falling over themselves to tap into the social media arena, and many of them are crashing and burning.
The smart business owners in recent times mastered the art of networking and referal based marketing. They understood the important rule that people have a ‘sphere of influence’ or in other words people know people. There is something called Girard’s Law that states that the sphere of influence is 250 people. And of course don’t forget each of those has 250 people in their sphere of influence. The maths gets big and the business implication very interesting .
That’s all very well but how make money from all this relationship building? Well it becomes a bit easier to understand when you understand another key rule or guiding principle. The same principle is a large amount of business momentum in social media and places such as Facebook today. It is the beautiful truth that people prefer to do business with and refer business to people they like and trust. Do the advert weary customers of today tend to trust large companies? Typically not. So when they try and sell without any relationships in the social networks they fail big time.
To get good leads and make good sales you have to develop a network of trust. That trust is created by good humour and good results. In other words you get happy customers that remember you and like you, and refer you to red hot prospects in their sphere of influence .
It can be difficult to tell a good lead from a bad lead even if it comes from a good friendly customer. Therefore you develop a system of handling your leads and you treat them all the same – well! The results will come, don’t force it.
So how can you construct this friendly network that will eventually be falling over themselves to help your business. Here are a couple of ideas to take away.
There are prospects everywhere in everyday life. If you bump into a potential customer at the local PTA introduce yourself and find out everything about them. Develop the “art of great questioning” and the “art of listening”. Most people can’t help but just talk about themselves and how interesting they are. Nobody is interested. Then once they have told you as much as you need about their business ask them how you could find prospects for them. Grab a business card and a few days later follow up with either a prospect or a little note with a newpaper cutting or similar about their industry. This one way relationship can eventually go two way and that can bring business your way.
Secondly identify your best current customers and set up a networking social event and get them to invite people they know from their business network. Remember it is best not to entertain multiple customers as their guests might end up poaching your customers. If you have high price goods and services then this sort of investment can work well. Maybe run some corporate golf events and to make them memorable hand out golf gifts at the end such as some promotional golf umbrellas marking the day and what you do
