How Do I Get Bet­ter At Networking?

Your en­ter­prise might be in its in­fancy, or you might be look­ing for new chan­nels for busi­ness, what­ever your rea­son, net­work­ing can open a lot of doors for the fledg­ling en­tre­pre­neur.

The old adage “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is still im­por­tant, and net­work­ing is a good way to get to know the right people.

Avoid it and you’ll do your busi­ness a dis­ser­vice. But it can be daunt­ing as a new­comer and you might fluff your first few attempts.

How­ever, it is pos­si­ble to get bet­ter at net­work­ing over time. Keep these tips in mind.

Set Net­work­ing Goals

Be­fore you en­ter a net­work­ing event set your­self some small goals.

These can keep you fo­cused and en­sure you are go­ing into the event with the right at­ti­tude. It could be that you’ll col­lect three cards from other busi­ness own­ers, or you might promise your­self you’ll speak about your busi­ness and hand out your own card to at least five people.

Hit your tar­gets, and then try push­ing those bound­aries a lit­tle and see where it takes you.

Pre­tend

This may sound a bit strange, but it’s the word net­work­ing that some­times throws peo­ple into a panic. Try and pre­tend you’re not go­ing to a net­work­ing event and merely go­ing out to meet new friends or po­ten­tial colleagues.

View it as a so­cial event for your busi­ness and then you’ll be much less stressed and intimidated.

Pre­pare

If you’re pre­pared you’re less likely to be flus­tered. Re­search po­ten­tial groups for con­tacts who may be ben­e­fi­cial for your busi­ness and make a point of in­ter­act­ing with these contacts.

The more you know about the event and its at­ten­dees the more at ease you’ll feel. Even if you just recog­nise a cou­ple of faces you’ll be­gin to feel more re­laxed and able to dis­cuss busi­ness informally.

Lis­ten and Learn

Less for­ward and con­fi­dent peo­ple can make great use of their ears! Most peo­ple want to talk, be brash and get their idea out there.

• But if you lis­ten more than you talk then you’ll be per­ceived as receptive.
• You’ll also be­gin to un­der­stand the chal­lenges other busi­nesses are facing.

Be­fore you know it you’ll find ways you can sup­port or help your new con­tacts in ways they had never imagined.

Prac­tice your Pitch

In some groups every mem­ber gets a chance to in­tro­duce them­selves and their busi­ness. This is enough to put plenty of peo­ple off as it is ex­tremely stress­ful stand­ing up in front of a room of strangers, es­pe­cially if you’re try­ing to pro­mote yourself.

Again the only way to make this a pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence is to prac­tice and test it out as much as pos­si­ble. In­tro­duce your­self and your busi­ness in a pos­i­tive and invit­ing way.

Fol­low Up

All of your net­work­ing will be for noth­ing if you get no busi­ness or vi­able con­nec­tions out of it.

You need to keep on top of it and most im­por­tantly you need to fol­low up. There’s noth­ing wrong with be­ing ea­ger and con­tact­ing those peo­ple you’ve chat­ted with about fur­ther busi­ness. If you don’t keep these re­la­tion­ships alive then you’re not ac­tu­ally net­work­ing at all and you will be forgotten.

Net­work­ing is just an­other way of mar­ket­ing your busi­ness and po­ten­tially find­ing cus­tomers and ex­pe­ri­enced con­tacts who can be used to your advantage.