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How Networking Can Transform Your Home Business

Guest post by: Theo Anidu

Article Overview: To be successful in your home business, you need to build effective relationships- get out of your comfort zone and connect with other people. Business today involves having great people skills. This is because, people do business with people. It is for this reason, that face to face contact can never be replaced with technology. Does this mean technology is bad? Certainly not. However, I'd rather speak to a live person than a machine offering me lots of options. Networking is about making a connection with someone. It is about rapport-building. It is not about trying to get as many people as possible to listen to your 30 second elevator speech, although you do need to have one.

How Networking Can Transform Your Home Business

People do business with people. It is for this reason, that face to face contact can never be replaced with technology. Does this mean technology is bad? Certainly not. However, I'd rather speak to a live person than a machine offering me lots of options.

To be successful in your home business, you need to build effective relationships- get out of your comfort zone, connect with other people and I don't mean the Facebook kind of connecting. Business today involves having great people skills.

Here are a few networking tips to help you get started;

Start small and be flexible. Find an activity you enjoy and register as a member. It could be a local book club or a Moms group. Do not go there to talk about your business. Get to know the members first.

You may consider joining your local Chamber of Commerce. It's a great way to meet other business owners in your community.

There are also local MeetUp.com groups that meet on a huge range of topics. If you're interested in business, social media, fishing, etc. You will find people who share the same interest as you on Meetup.com. A lot of the groups are super active and have little to no joining fees

Also available are the BNI meeting groups. These are awesome for true networking and lead passage. You will meet a large array of local businesses that join the group for a year or more at a time. The cost of this is a bit higher and you need to commit to attendance policies.

When participating in your group, make sure to always bring your business cards. Make it a point to take some time to really talk and get to know people.

Networking is about making a connection with someone. It is about rapport-building. It is not about trying to get as many people as possible to listen to your 30 second elevator speech, although you do need to have one.

When you are chatting with a new contact, ask important questions about them. Learn about their business. Show a genuine interest in what they do. Don't forget to make eye contact. You can also make a few notes on their business card about what you talked about so that you can remember.

At a later date, you can call them up or drop a note saying how much you enjoyed meeting them or say, “Hey,here might be a solution something we chatted about.” If you really hit it off, you could ask them to coffee or something.

A few things networking don'ts;

Don’t try and run through a room and meet everyone.

Don’t try and pass your business cards out to everyone. Make it special so they remember you and you remember them. Each one of your connections is very valuable. You may need them some day and having a great local contact is worth its price in gold.

Four simple reasons why networking works;

Your business will be more successful because you will be making yourself known to the right people.

You can exchange ideas with your contacts and also get encouragement, motivation and guidance.

Your contacts can provide information that can make a huge difference to your business.

Referrals. People do business with people they like, trust and respect.

Most of all, life is more fun when you have good relationships.

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Article Tags: business today, elevator speech, home business, networking, networking tips, relationships



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My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Marketing 2012 - I am interested in what works for you in 2012, Social Networking, Search Engine traffic, Blogs, Articles, Forums, what? This is a quote from a 2009 Topic "Twitter, Social Networking, What is your Method? From my experience, social networking traffic (Twitter included) also converts at a far lower rate than search engine traffic. Evan Is this still true, or do you use something that gives us better returns and conversions
Re: Trade Shows - Are They Worth It? - HI, I have used trade shows (not participated) to collect potential clients. For example, the Home & Garden Industry is extremely behind the time in regards to their websites. I attended an Home & Garden Expo in Denver and collected all the companies contact information. I plan on cold calling & mailing information to each business. It also gave me time to research the industry more, talk directly to the owners in many cases, and learn more about what they need. Jeff


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