A great story to illustrate this, is the famous one about the hot dog seller:

“A Man lived by the side of the road…and sold hot dogs.

He was hard of hearing, so he had no radio. He had trouble with his eyes, so he had no newspaper. But he sold good hot dogs.

He put up a sign on the highway, telling how good they were. He stood by the side of the road and cried, “Buy a hot dog, mister!” And People bought.

He increased his meat and bun order, and he bought a bigger stove to take care of his trade. He got his son home from college to help him. But then something happened. His son said, “Father, haven’t you been listening to the radio? There’s a big Depression on. The international situation is terrible, and the domestic situation is even worse.”

Whereupon the father thought, “Well, my son has gone to college. He listens to the radio and reads the newspaper, so he ought to know.” So, the father cut down on the bun order, took down his advertising sign, and no longer bothered to stand on the highway to sell hot dogs.

His hot dog sales fell almost overnight. “You were right, son”, the father said to the boy. “We are certainly in the middle of a Great Depression.”"

With the current business situation, now is an ideal opportunity to get ahead of your competition and bring in those new clients.

It’s one of the reasons I started a new networking group in Cobham – yes, it does require an investment of time and some money to network… but without this investment, the story above is most likely to be proven true.

If you would like to join other businesses that are looking to grow, please do join me – we meet on Tuesday mornings at the Cobham Hilton.

There are limited spaces, and as we have catering provided it is essential to reserve a place beforehand – just click the email icon in the page footer to contact me directly.

People may think that their potential client base is wide and while it may be, if people aren’t able to focus on an area to look out for then they are likely to miss potential opportunities to refer you.

A good way to remember this is ‘if you ask for anyone and say you can do anything, what you will actually end up with is no one and nothing!’

Its something I’ve experienced myself – taxhelp.uk.com specialises in helping self-employed people, and the head office is in Surrey – so people instantly know who we help and where we give a face to face service. Interestingly, I do get people asking for other services that I don’t offer – but with an extensive network of connections I can usually recommend someone suitable to help them.

I also had a great experience of how powerful being specific is, last weekend. I attended a European networking conference at the Hilton in Glasgow. Several of the presenters asked for specific referrals at the end of their presentations. Despite being 400 miles away from home, I was able to connect three of them to people I know. Had they just said what they do in general terms, and not been very specific, then they wouldn’t have achieved the results.

When you are thinking about bringing in more business, you could find that narrowing your focus and being specific actually brings in more business, not less as some people fear.

A) Start it on my own, and make things up as I went along.

B) Use the proven procedures from an organisation involved in networking. In fact, the world’s number one referral marketing organisation. One with 140,000 members worldwide and more than twenty-five years experience. An organisation that, just in the UK and Ireland alone saw its members share in over a quarter of a billion pounds worth of business in 2011. An organisation that has its own private social network that connects all 140,000 members worldwide. An Organisation that also provides extensive training for its members so that they can earn more in their business – training that is also certified for CPD purposes.

When you consider the two options, it should be pretty clear which is more likely to produce the best results and it is no surprise that I chose option B. I was most surprised though when one person I met this week thought that doing it all myself was what I should have done, and proceeded to tell me so in no uncertain terms!

When I decided on the best option to start the group with support, I approached the executive director of the networking organisation in my area, and asked if this would be possible. I was grateful when he agreed that I could start my own group.

As you would expect from the world’s number one referral organisation you don’t just start these groups without training.

My personal investment in this training amounted to nearly £1,000 and almost a week out of the office. I didn’t want to wait to get the group started, so right after the 31st January deadline I travelled up to Sheffield to attend the training rather than take a holiday.

Having successfully completed the training I have been running the meetings at Cobham for several weeks now.

If you would like to visit the group, please do contact me to reserve your place.

You meet a huge variety of people at events, the purpose of which is to make connections that could lead to possible business rather than make a sale on the day.

In the six years I have been networking I have attended events ranging from small ones with a handful of people right up to the larger ones with 500+ people.

At one event in London, the presenter asked the audience ‘who is here to sell today?’ and most of the hands went up. He then asked ‘who is here to buy today?’ and out of 500 people only a few hands went up. It’s something that’s important to remember – if you have a service you need to establish your credibility first.

Dr Ivan Misner, who has over 25 years experience in networking, has developed the VCP(R) process:

Visibility & Credibility = Profitability

Visibility – being at a networking event with other quality businesses for example.

Credibility - you need to establish your experience and qualifications, which can take time, and in the example above it’s unlikely that people are ready to buy right now in the room. Once your credibility is established then they are likely to do business, and also refer their contacts too.

Profitability – or the sale, where business is done.

In my time networking I have witnessed a couple of incidences where people have been so focussed on selling to the room that they tried to jump the process and go from Visibility right to Profitability, with the result that they have actually missed out on potential sales:

1) I was at an event in Guildford several years ago, there was a chap there who was approached by a bookkeeper – he just looked at her name badge, said ‘I don’t need bookkeeping’ and walked off! What he didn’t know was that the bookkeeper was approaching him because they needed HIS services. He could have actually made a sale if he hadn’t been focussed on selling.

2) At an event recently there was a person who wanted to jump right to the sale. They had attended an event with quality business people in attendance but wanted to sell to the room that day, and became somewhat fractious when they couldn’t. Rather than use it as an opportunity to get to know people, start to develop relationships and establish their credibility they wasted the chance.

It’s important to remember that you don’t know who the people in the room know – they could have the ideal contact or referral for you, but if you focus on selling to them then it’s unlikely they will make the connection for you. If you take the time to establish your credibility though, and are genuinely interested in other people at the event then the rewards can be immense.

Want to know more?

If you would like to find out more about networking face to face, and potentially reach thousands of contacts, the new networking group I am launching in Cobham next meets on Tuesday 24th April – please contact me to reserve your place.

If your interest is in online networking, I am one of the presenters at the ‘earn more money from Social Media’ event in Dorking this Friday the 20th April – please do contact me to reserve your place there as well. With many quality businesses attending the event, it’s also a great opportunity to make local business connections in Surrey.

18 months is a long time in Social Media, we have seen new sites rise and others fall – the speed in which this happens has been increasing.

Whilst the sites people use may change, what remains constant are the techniques I use with Social Networking for business – after all it is just being Social with a network.

With this in mind, and considering the rise of e-readers now (I was an early adopter of the kindle, which had to be imported from the USA), I have adjusted the price of the ebook version of Chocks Away. It will filter through to Amazon and the iBookstore over the next few weeks.

This reflects the fact that things are constantly changing online, and the book market is changing too. The paperback remains at the original price, due to the costs of production, but with ebooks the great advantage is that they can be downloaded in seconds.

If you would like to find out more about how I have used social media in my own business since 2008, please do join me at this event:

Earn More MONEY using Social Media (and BNI Connect)

Which is being held at Denbies on the 20th April, from 2-5pm.

I am one of the presenters, alongside Zoe Cairns and Tim Kidd. When we ran this social media presentation in Kent we had over 100 attendees, who rated it highly.

Online, your website is like your office on the high street.

It is a public face, and one that people are increasingly using to judge your business.

As such, it is worthwhile investing money into its appearance and ease of use – just as you would do with a physical office.

I have been researching local companies recently, which has exposed me to many different websites.

Unfortunately, I am finding that many of them are continuing to make the same mistakes – ones which are costing them business and making it easier for their competitors, despite being easily fixed.

Here are a few:

1) The site has gone – if people find you and then go to your website only to find an empty error page they are likely to assume that you have gone out of business. Perhaps you have a new website, but it may be worth keeping the old one as a redirect to the new site. Like the image above, if people go to your address and it’s empty they assume you have gone out of business. At least with a physical building sometimes people put a note in the window telling people where they have moved to.

2) Contact details – the purpose of many websites is to generate enquiries for the business. If this is the goal, then it should be made easy for people to contact you, and to know who you are. If you just have a company name with no personal details you are less likely to receive enquiries – people do business with people. You also want to make it easy for people to reach you, by whatever method they prefer, whether that is by email or telephone or via a social network.

3) Location – I have noticed some sites not actually telling you where they are located. For a limited company it is a legal requirement that the registered address is shown on the website, as well as the other contact details, yet some sites don’t tell you anywhere where they are located. Some other sites have started posting vague statements about areas they cover – that might bring them search results, but when local people are looking to do business with a local company they are going to be less than impressed that they are based maybe 100 miles away but ‘cover’ the area.

4) Email address – there are three aspects to consider. The first is whether it is made easy for people to contact the company – complicated forms with large numbers of compulsory boxes will drive clients away. The second is the actual email address. It is very affordable to have a personal email, rather than joebloggs at hmail. When people are contacting the business, if they see that they only have a free email address it will affect their impression of the business. The final aspect is to ensure that the email address is a valid one – if people receive a bounced email error after taking the time to write you a message, it is as bad as an empty office with no-one there to speak to a potential client.

These are several of the points to consider, which are all simple and low cost options to increase the business generated from a website. Depending on how the website content management system is structured, they should be able to be changed in minutes rather than hours.

The amount of business secured through peer-to-peer referrals has rocketed by 45% since before the financial crisis, suggesting that firms are taking the business development potential of networking more seriously.

Today was the first day back to work for many after the long bank holiday weekend, and this morning saw a group of local businesses meet at the Cobham Hilton, to grow their business in 2012.

You can read the full article here: Networking moves up the agenda for business

And if you are serious about growing your business, please do contact me to reserve a place at our next meeting on the 17th April. viagra

We meet at the Cobham Hilton hotel, an excellent venue for a business meeting and ideally located next to the A3/M25 junction:

The group only allows one person per professional category, as this maximises the business received and means that members are not competing with others in the room.

The categories that have already been taken are:

Accountant: Sole traders & individuals

Financial Adviser

Bookkeeper

Garage – Service/Repair

Web Video

With five members already, the other categories will be going soon. Please do contact me to arrange to visit us.

We are already seeing business being passed in the group – this week there were three referrals for the web video expert alone, and last week we had two for the garage as well.

Our next meeting is on the 10th of April, and there is still time to reserve a place before the Easter holidays – if you could handle more business in Surrey.

With the Easter break approaching now is a good time to see where you are, and if it matches the goals you set at the start of the year.

How has your new client acquisition gone so far in 2012?

When it comes to growing a business, there are a couple of facts to consider:

98% of businesses rely on referrals to gain new business, but…

only 3% of businesses have a strategy for referrals.

This is the reason why I am starting a new business networking group in Cobham, when we grow the group we know that on average we will receive £26,000 of new business each every year.

One of the reasons why the group will prove to be so successful is that we only allow one person per professional category, so there is no competition between group members.

There’s business waiting to be referred to you!

If you would like to share some of this, please visit us post Easter and start working towards a better second quarter.

We are meeting in the morning on the 10th April at the Cobham Hilton – contact me to book your place.

1) An introduction to business networking

2) Tips for those considering self employment

3) Tax tips for those who have started self employment

These were shot in a professional studio, and I’ll be uploading them in due course once the editing has been completed.

The style of video is different to my previous ones, and there are bullet points contained within the video.

I’ll also be uploading a series of factsheets to go alongside the videos, look out for these in the resources section of the website.

I blogged about how effective video can be for business back in 2009 – it remains so today, and is something you may want to investigate yourself as a way to boost your own business.