Don't Waste Your Money Or My Time

I spend a lot of time networking, it's my thing. I enjoy it and I'm good at it. I try to help others, so hopefully this will help some of you. If you think paying the entrance fee to join a networking group will automatically grant you customers, please, don't waste your money or my time. Now, as a counterpoint to that, if you are going to spend ANY money to join a group then do something to make the group better. I've had this conversation with hundreds of people, " well Mike, were just so busy that we can't make the time to attend the meetings/events." That's crap. I can't speak for everybody that joins a networking group or a chamber of commerce, but I do know that many of us are salespeople and our #1 job is to find new customers. So, if you're not at an event meeting people and creating relationships then where do you find your business? You buy lists? You mail letters? You cold call on the phone or "door to door?" Do you have ANY idea  how unsuccessful those mediums are for the VAST majority of sales? Now, here is my favorite part, I'm going to get response from "Guru's" that tell me "actually Mike, with my proven program you can guarantee X in appointments and closed sales." You know my response to that? You guessed it, more crap. Now, I want to be perfectly clear. I do realize that there are rare individuals out there that can cold call their way through anything and I do realize that there are teams dedicated to this sole purpose. If your throw enough crap against the wall, something is bound to stick. It's a terrible way to live.
 I am here to tell you, if you want to sell in the business world today, you build relationships, one at a time with people. You show these people that they can trust you and that you have their success at the root of your proposal and that is how you win business. You offer to help people even though there is a real good chance they will NEVER be able to help you in return and may never be able to buy from you. And you do these things because you will end up helping many of these people and they will show gratitude and when you need them to introduce you to someone  they will do so without hesitation.

I recently joined a new online networking group. I found the concept intriguing because they actively encourage members to send referrals to the people in their network. To jump start my group I sent out a mass email to about 1200 people, inviting them to join in. Admittedly this group is not for everyone. It really is built for sales people. What did intrigue me was the number of people that took the time to respond to my invitation via email, but did not bother to read the email. Several people made very bland generic responses indicating they had not read what I said them. What's worse is several people had responses that indicated they read it but didn't understand it. One person went so far as to ask me what joining my network had to do with gaining new customers.

So what can we learn from all this
Get out there and network.
Don't spend your money if your not going to commit to being successful
View an invitation as just that, it's an opportunity to better yourself
If you're not willing to commit, don't waste your money, or my time

Thanks for reading today

Mike

BTW, be sure to check out my fundraising blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com