Small Business – Get More Clients – Asking The Right Questions About Your Networking
Let me ask you some questions about your networking.
- Do you measure the results?
- Do you know what results you HAVE to have each and every week and are managing the results to get them without fail?
- Do you make changes to what you do, what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to?
Or do you just keep doing the same things over and over expecting it to get better? Most people do….at least until….one day they wake up and find ….it isn’t working.
Then what do those people do?
Many quit networking, or maybe quit networking where they have been networking.
Let me give you a suggestion. No matter what you are doing in your marketing…and networking should be just one part of your networking plan, can you afford to quit doing it just because it isn’t working? That is an absolute, certain, emphatic NO!
Marketing is one of those things you can’t afford not to do. So, for the most part, you should be asking questions EVERY time you do it and then finding the answers.
Good questions can be
- What do I expect out of this activity? Or What MUST you have out of this activity THIS WEEK? Is it one client every time you do it, or one client for every 10 or 20 activities?
- What do you do when you don’t reach those levels? There must be a next step to correct this or you are just continuing to do the same things and expecting different results….insanity!
HINT: Deciding NOT to do it, shouldn’t be one of the choices…unless you can replace it with an activity that is already, or can, generate more for less investment of time or money. A choice to STOP any marketing activity when it isn’t replaced with one that is even better, is a nail in your business coffin. Marketing is ONE of the MUST-DO activities in a business. Or, maybe I should say that a little differently, the RESULTS marketing produces should be ONE of the things that MUST happen no matter what…each and every week. What activity you do is just another choice, but the results are not an option.
Let’s say that you have set a target of $500K for this year.
How much is a client worth to you? If you don’t know….you should…because this is one of the greatest opportunities to grow your business. Once you know what a client is worth, the next logical question is “How do I raise the value of that average client?”
You might decide to go after a higher-value client, or you might decide to get more of the same kind of client, or even get those clients coming back for more and more….buying more times, more often, or buying more each time. Those are all things that you, as a business owner should be doing.
In fact, business owner, do you realize that your job is not out there doing what most business owners are doing….working IN the business, but working ON the business. What that means is, let’s say you are a cook that owns a restaurant, your success will not come from working IN the kitchen. Your success will come once you start designing the business results you want.
Ask yourself, when you are working in the kitchen, what would you pay a cook to replace you? Would it be $20-$30/hour for a short order cook, or a few hundred for a top chef? Now answer this, what would you be worth IF, while designing the business you were making that $500K, or a million dollars? So, step back and design the business you want, and find the answers to all of these questions I’ve been asking.
Back to the questions.
Let’s say that an average customer is worth $5,000, and you had targeted $500K for the year, obviously you’ll need 100 customers for the year, or 2 customers a week. Doesn’t sound like a difficult number to me.
Now, if you meet 10 people this week…how many of them buy? If your answer is 1 sale in 10, then you will HAVE to meet with 20 people this week. If you answer 5 in 10, then you HAVE to meet only 4 people this week….a whole lot easier. In either case, we know what we’ve got to do to make this happen and we’ll DRIVE to make that happen each and every week.
Back to our networking….how many networking events do you go to every week? And, how many sales appointments do you get from that networking? Are you delivering the 20 a week, or the 4 a week, or whatever your requirement was?
When it comes to marketing of any kind, networking, direct mail, newspaper, cold calling…it’s important to understand exactly how much of each activity is necessary to deliver your requirements that we just worked out.
If it isn’t working to that level, then there are only a few choices:
- Change what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to.
- Change how much of that activity you do to get the required number of leads/week
Notice something there? One of the options WAS NOT stop doing it. You have to adjust what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to while watching the number of leads a week. You MUST know exactly how many leads any activity delivers each and every week.
What I typically see when working with a client to help them grow their marketing responses is that we set a reasonable expectation for an activity, and the amount of activity. That usually takes them several times where they started. Simply because they didn’t know what to expect in the first place so they were just trying “a little of this and a little of that.” But, once they start tracking the results and tweaking what they say, how they say it, and who they say it to, a little tweak usually results in the outcome going up another 2-5 times because they are now in control.
================================================
Do you want to learn more about how to increase your business nearly overnight?
I have just completed my brand new guide Secrets to Doubling a Business Nearly Overnight. You’ll also get a free invitation to join a mastermind group of other business owners as they build their business. Hear what works and doesn’t work.
Get your “Secrets to Doubling a Business Nearly Overnight” for free
Alan Boyer coaches small business owners who want more business than they can handle, or at least more than they imagined…before this…..The reports have been “5-10 times more clients in just a few weeks, and still growing.
http://www.leaders-perspective.com/Double-Your-Business.htm
