Building relationships

How Powerful is Your Word of Mouth?

by Sandra Hart on May 20, 2013 · 0 comments

group 3 (276x183)Recently something happened which had never happened before in history, it lasted for less than 5 minutes but it caused the loss of over $200 billion on the Dow Jones Index. What was it?

It was a rogue tweet….a hoax, now a hoax tweet in itself would not be a first, however the profound effect it had on the stock exchange was.  What actually happened was that The Associated Press twitter account had been hacked and a tweet was sent saying something which was completely untrue.   [click to continue…]

Look after your advocates

by Richard White on April 29, 2013 · 1 comment

Young smiling woman spraying flowersI always say that one good advocate is worth ten clients. When networking I am normally looking for potential advocates rather than clients – people who can recommend me to their clients when a sales related problem arises. What gets exciting about having a network of advocates is that provided you look after your direct advocates then your reputation will start to grow through their networks.

I am regularly amazed at how badly some people treat their advocates. I had one company who I had been advocating and had referred to them almost £50,000 of business over a couple of months. When I decided to use them for my own business they took advantage of the relationship and gave me a very sloppy service saying they were too busy with other clients. The clients I had referred to them by the way! [click to continue…]

Do I really want to connect with you?

by Charlie Lawson on April 25, 2013 · 8 comments

Crowd 1I was chatting with a business owner the other day about online networking.  He said he was getting massively frustrated with Linked In – he understood that it was important that he had a presence on the network – but just found himself inundated with connection requests, and plenty of them were from people he didn’t know.

I asked him what he did with all these requests – he replied that he simply clicked ‘ignore’.  [click to continue…]

open networking 2What exactly is a networking strategy and why do you need one? Why can’t you just show up to networking events and win bucket-loads of business?

A business networking strategy is essentially a marketing plan for your networking efforts. Like any good marketing plan it describes who you want to meet, how you’re going to meet them, how you’re going to help them and what you’re going to say/do when you get in front of them. [click to continue…]

“I AM AN EXPERIENCED NETWORKER” – Not!

April 12, 2013

“I’m an experienced networker.” I meet people that say this almost on a daily basis and I find it rather amusing. Why? Because 9 times out of 10, they aren’t what you should call an ‘experienced networker.’ Let me tell you the story about Simon, an Interior Designer that I met at a mutual friend’s party a few weeks ago (his name has been changed – or maybe not – to protect the innocent). He claimed in a very boastful, almost arrogant way, to be an “experienced” networker My lovely wife and I were invited to the birthday party of [...]

Read the full article →

Are You Listening?

March 18, 2013

It was a taste of my own medicine I guess! For years I’ve been preaching the importance of listening. Not just being politely quiet when the other person is speaking, but really listening. Paying attention. I’ve talked about listening for people rather than simply to them and shared Stephen Covey’s thoughts about empathetic listening. But listening requires work and practice and it’s easy to get distracted without realising it and fail to listen. As was brought home to me recently.

Read the full article →

What’s the story?

March 13, 2013

I went to University in Dublin, a favourite greeting there is “What’s the story?” which is sometimes shortened to “story?”  Being from the Mayo, deep in the west of Ireland, when I went to Dublin first I wasn’t used to the “North Side” accents and really didn’t know what most people were talking about for a few weeks, I thought it was some sort of Gaelic slang!! Really when you think about it, we love telling each other stories, years ago we had professional storytellers in Ireland sitting around fire places recanting stories and telling tales. Now we have great [...]

Read the full article →

Have you the passion?

March 8, 2013

Richard Branson, Steven Spielberg and Nigel Botterill all have one thing in common – as do all successful people – a real passion for what they do.  Love them or hate them we all take notice of people that are passionate about what they do, produce or sell.  They are just impossible to ignore. And it’s just the same when you are networking. You can have a plan, all the tools, dress the part, and have a great opening line (lift pitch, seven second introduction, whatever you want to call it) but, without real passion, you will never truly succeed.  [...]

Read the full article →