Essential Tips for Entrepreneurs to do best Business Networking

Understand the potential of Business Networking from Entrepreneurs' perspective

By Faiz Askari

NEW DELHI: Networking time is said to be quality time for an entrepreneur. The essentials of effective business networking are some of the main skills of a good entrepreneur. Knowing someone at the same time getting known for some specific quality are two prime objectives of business networking. This is a first step of business expansion. However, there are many aspects which must be considered while doing business networking building trust, relationship formation and taking benefits from others’ capabilities are some of great tools that can be derived from business networking.

Here are some essential tips for Business Networking:

Shortlist your positioning:

Before getting on to the business of business networking. The first and foremost step must have to start within. It is crucial for the entrepreneur to understand his or her own capabilities, organization’s strengths and accordingly what positioning you would like to make. For example, if there is a software company which specialses on to ERP systems, it has to decide what are the key strengths or unique selling prepositions of their product/solution. Also, the company owner has to take the decision if they would like to have a specific positioning which could be technology specific or industry segment specific. This will ensure the strength of the company in the targeted respective market.

Explore New Groups: An entrepreneur must have to explore new groups which sparks their respective business interest. Understand and analyze the group from the kind of audience and their discussions. This applies for physical events or forums as well as online forums. Once the groups are finalized, ensure your strong positioning in the group. Remember, this is a delicate subject, never try to act over smart by highlighting only your utilities or strengths bluntly. Instead, understand what is getting discussed in the group and then highlight yourself or your business accordingly.

Gauge the level of acceptance for your skills, expertise: This can be judged by asking open-ended questions in networking conversations. This means questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. This form of questioning opens up the discussion and shows listeners that you are interested in them.

Share your Customer or client testimonials: This is very interesting tool for convincing the potential customers or clients. When you are known as a strong resource, people remember to turn to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, etc. This keeps you visible to them.

Highlight your specialty: Differentiate from competition. For this step, you have to understand your competition and avoid doing the same thing. It is advised that you emphasize on such capabilities which can easily get articulated in front of others.

Accessiblity: It is very important to be approachable and easily accessible for your potential customers or clients. Share you email and ensure timely responses, share your contact numbers such as mobile phone which you usually use during the office hours.

Stay Connected: Express that you enjoyed meeting your new business friend after the meeting. This can be trough a phone call or through an email. share ideas for mutual benefits and it is advised tyo stay connected.

Social Media: Take your relation to some form of social media as well. However, this is an exclusive area of understanding which we will discuss in our next article.