Posted by: www.consultxi.com Expert

Attending conferences and going to local meet-ups is a great way to meet new people, but it isn’t a good way to get to know someone. If you really want to be successful at networking you have to follow these steps:

Put your feelers out there

Every time you attend an event, you’ll notice that there are a few networking whores in the room who hand out business cards to every single person they see. They usually get to know thousands of people, but when it is time to call in a favor or ask for help, no one steps up to the plate because they haven’t built any personal relationships.

The goal with networking is to build personal relationships and you don’t do this by being a whore. The next time you attend an event and are looking to network, here are a few things you can do:

1. Look for the most popular groups in the room. These groups are popular because they are made up of the “it” crowd. These are the type of people you want to be associated with for obvious reasons.
2. Once you have found the popular groups, look to see what individuals make up those groups. You don’t want to cut into a group and try to join the conversation because it will create an awkward moment. Instead you want to wait till one of those individuals leaves the group for a moment (to get food, get a drink, go to the bathroom…) and start to get to know them.
3. After you start getting to know a few people in the “it” crowd, you can then join the group they are in. This way, there won’t be an awkward moment because you’ll know a few people in the group.
4. When the conversation starts dying down, you want to get people’s contact information. You can either do this in a casual fashion by trading phone numbers or by trading business cards.

Start following up

Within 24 hours of meeting someone in person, you want to follow up with them. If you don’t, they might forget who you are. The easiest way you can do this is by sending an email like this:

Hey John,

It was great meeting you at the Seattle 2.0 Awards. We should meet-up for lunch or drinks next week. Let me know when you are free.

By the way, I noticed that your company provides design services for small online businesses; I know a few people that could be interested in your services. Let me know if you would like an introduction.

Thanks
Neil

If you read the email above, you’ll notice that I did was two things:

• The first was to give a few options on meeting up
• And the second was to offer to help them out

By doing both of those things your chances of getting a person to follow up with you will be higher. If you just invite someone for lunch or drinks, they may not respond. But if you do something for them, they’ll feel obligated to respond.

Setup a meeting

Once you get someone agree to meet-up with you there are a few etiquette rules that you have to follow:

1. Pick a meeting location that is convenient for the other party, and not just you. If you are the one who wants the meeting, why should they have to come to you? You should be the one driving to them.
2. Don’t be late to the meeting! I don’t care if there is traffic or if you have some family issues, always be on time for a meeting you setup. And if you tend to be late to meetings, it is better to be extra early than late. If the person you are meeting happens to be late, that’s fine, you just can’t be late.
3. When it comes time to pay the bill, you have to be the one paying. Don’t wait too long before you throw your credit card down, and if the other persons offers to pay, tell them that they can pay next time. The worst things you can do in this situation is split the bill in half or take time to throw your credit card down because it makes it seem like you don’t want to pay.

Build a personal relationship

Meetings don’t have to about work. Talking about money or business all the time gets boring. If you want to successful at networking you have to build personal relationships and not just business relationships. You can do this by talking about general topics such as sports, family, or anything you think may interest the other person.

When chit chatting, pay close attention to their body language. If you are feel the other person is getting bored, change the topic. You want to talk about stuff that you both find interesting.

Conclusion

Once you finish your first meeting you’ll notice that you are building a friendship and not just a business relationship. This is the secret with networking because if a friend asks you for something, you are more likely to do something for them compared to if a business colleague asked you for something.

And lastly, you’ll want to have many more meetings with the same person. You never build great friendships over one meeting you build friendships over years. So don’t expect your networking to pay off within a few weeks or months, it can take years before you see a ROI.

Do you want to be a better entrepreneur?

Do you want to make more money?

Here’s how you can do it in 6 steps.

1. Take a break

Just for a moment, sit back and relax. Before you dive back into your work you need to figure out where you are financially in life. One of the main reasons you are going into business is because you want to make more money. So the main question that should come to your mind is:

How much money do you want to make?

You don’t need a billion dollars and the odds of you making anywhere near that are slim to none. So what’s your number?

Chances are the amount you want to make is far more than you’ll actually need. Sit down and take a moment to write down everything you want to buy and how much money you’ll need to make to buy it all. Maybe a fancy house, some exotic cars, and enough cash where you don’t have to worry about working. If you add up the total of everything you want, it shouldn’t run you more than a few million dollars and if you break it down into yearly income it probably won’t be more than a few hundred thousand dollars.

If this isn’t the case, then you are smoking crack. You don’t need tons of toys to be happy. If you think you do, you will have a tough time making all of that money because it is really unlikely that you will make a few million dollars a year or sell your company for a hundred million dollars if you haven’t even made a few hundred grand first.

So stop swinging for the fences, especially if you haven’t hit a single yet!

2. Stop innovating and start copying

Now that you know that you don’t have to make millions of dollars a year, you have to come up with a business that will help you make a decent amount of money. It doesn’t have to be an innovative business that solves a pain in the market place; it just has to be a business that can turn a healthy profit every year.

A good way to find one of these businesses is by talking to friends and family. You’ll be amazed on how many basic businesses like plumbing (I am not saying you should be a plumber) make a decent amount of money. Find something that you’ll enjoy and start the business. Just don’t pick something that requires millions of dollars to start.

If you already have a business analyze how you are currently doing and see what tweaks you can make to it, so that it fits your financial objectives.

3. Time isn’t on your side

Nothing has to be perfect. What you may see as faulty might look perfect to your customers. It doesn’t matter what you want, it matters what your customers want.

This is why you don’t want to make any big decisions because if something goes wrong you’ll end up wasting a lot of time. Break that big decision into a few small decisions. Then survey your customers or potential customers to get their opinion; this should help you determine what route to take.

Even after you talk to your customers you are still going to make mistakes. Just make sure you are agile enough to adapt quickly. It is all about testing small things instead of taking months to roll out changes in your business.

4. Work hard, play hard

If you work 12-hour days, you are going to get burned out. It doesn’t matter if you love what you are doing you need to take breaks.

• Don’t work longer than a few hours without taking a break. Taking small breaks throughout your day will make you more efficient and cause you to accomplish more.
• Every week you should do something that is out of the ordinary. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it could be as simple as going to the park and having a picnic with your family. Just do something that will take your mind away from work and reduce your stress level.
• Create a work environment that you want to be in. Small things like having plants in your workspace, putting up motivational posters, and having a window to look out of can do wonders for you. If your work environment is dark and boring you’ll be forcing yourself to work everyday.

5. Stop deviating

New business opportunities are going to come your way and you will want to jump on them. But all of these things are going to be distractions. They’ll cause you to deviate from your path to success and it will take longer for you to reach your ultimate goal.

You to have to resist the temptation.

If you happen to take any of these opportunities you’ll soon find out that you will be increasing your risk intake. The more things you do, especially ones outside of your skill set, the higher the chance that something is going to fail.

Plus, the more things you do, the more spread out you will be. Once you spread yourself too thin you won’t be able to spend enough time on any of your businesses and you’ll notice that they will all suffer.

6. Never stop learning

The most important and last thing you should know is that you should never stop learning. No matter how successful you are, there is going to be someone out there who has accomplished more than you.

So instead of being arrogant, take every opportunity you get to learn new things. Whether it is from an experienced entrepreneur who has been around the block, or a 16-year-old kid, everyone can teach you something. You just have to learn what to take away from a conversation because there are going to be some things that are going to benefit you and others that won’t.

Conclusion

As an entrepreneur you have learned a few other things that I didn’t include in this blog post.

We’re a company with a passion for making other people happy. This can include consumers, clients, the guy at the grocery store, and even those difficult-to-please investors. We share enthusiasm for great products, killer marketing, and companies that are willing to put the effort into truly doing things right. Since we started, we’ve always strived to make sure the work we do is top-notch and so far we’ve made a lot of friends that way. All of this passion has translated into our company culture and sometimes we feel a bit schizophrenic. We are developing our own products, running popular blogs, and providing services that cover the entire realm of online marketing. Most people would say it’s better to focus on just one thing but in fact we’ve realized that gaining experience and expertise in all these areas is what makes us valuable to our customers. Marketing involves much more than a single pronged approach and we pride ourselves in leveraging the synergy of all possible tactics.

We are creative, are you? Key element for success!

The push marketing, sales, and traditional tactics for reaching customers are evolving rapidly. At Consultxi.com believe that marketing these days is about more pull than ever. In order to get the message across you need outstanding creative that people love to share and spread around. We have an entire team of developers, designers, and social media experts that are constantly creating new content and media that people out there love. If you’re looking for widgets, quizzes, facebook applications, flash games, or anything else that pulls attention we can help.

Contatc us today, for a simple talk on how we can help: success@consultxi.com

or drop by at: www.consultxi.com