How to encourage the members of your weekly or fortnighly networking group to recommend your business to others and vice versa.

Prepare the Way Forward

Before I start, here are some ground rules that each member of the group should adopt:

• Get to know the businesses of your fellow group members through One-2-Ones or even by testing their products/services yourself.
• Educate people about your business in your 60 second and 10 minute presentations.
• Be specific about who and what type of referrals you’re after avoiding the use of generalist phrases such as “I’m looking for senior managers” or “I’m want to speak to people who want to save money/generate more sales/grow their businesses”.
• Make your presentation memorable by being humorous, through the use of props or by telling a story.
• Change your presentation for each meeting, focus on a different product or service area. Don’t reel off lists of services or boar people rigid about your company history.
• People buy from people is an old but accurate phrase. So make yourself likeable, someone who is known to help others and someone who is perceived to be an ‘expert’ in their field. Get this mix right and people will become enthusiastic about you and your business and as such, will pro-actively seek referrals for you.

Learning about each other’s work is essentially “product knowledge” which is something every good sales person should have under their belts before they go out the door. So once you and your fellow members become familiar with each other’s businesses then it becomes easier to obtain referrals for one another.

Learn and Adopt New Habits

So, getting down to the nitty-gritty, some of the techniques that I have found to work include:

• Focus on a Member
  In your own mind, choose a fellow member to focus on for the next week. For example, if it’s the IT person in the group: make it your mission that week to keep your eyes and ears open for potential “buying signals” from your clients and associates.

  Such buying signals could the need for them to have a problem resolved indicated by them saying “my computer is running really slow” or “I need sort a new laptop out”.

• Agree a Call Back Time
  Once you’ve identified a potential client for a fellow member, explain that you know someone who may be able to help them. Do not give them the member’s card with the quip of “give this guy a call” or something similar. Because they won’t and the potential lead will die a death! Instead ask them if it’s okay for the group member (in this case the IT business representative) to give them a call. If a positive response is received, agree a convenient time and then arrange with your fellow group member to call the client at the predetermined time.
• Drop it into Conversation
  If you regularly speak to your client’s you’ll have a fair idea of which type of services they buy already. Drop into the conversation that you know an alternative supplier if they need one. If there’s an immediate need, they’ll ask you directly for a contact into that company. I used this technique recently with great success myself when looking for referrals for the commercial photographer in one of my networking groups. During an email exchange with a client that I knew to use external photographers, I dropped in the comment:

“Oh by the way – I know you guys use photographers, if you’re looking for an alternative supplier, I currently work with a talented photographer who’s based not far from you. Here’s a link to his web site www.rogervmoody.co.uk Give me a call if you’d like an introduction”.

Worked a treat, and sure as apples is apples, my client called me up and asked for more information which resulted in a good referral for my photographer associate.

• Get Referrals from Your Prospects
  When I go to see potential new clients I’ve also got half an ear open for potential opportunities for my networking peers. So even if I can’t help them directly with my own services, if I can suggest someone who may be able to solve another problem they have which has come to light during my conversations, by suggesting a provider who can solve their issue; then at least I can still leave the meeting with my prospect still thinking I’m a “great bloke” and someone who is “worth knowing”!

What Tips Have You Got?

If you’re part of a business networking group, what methods do you find to be effective when generating referrals for your fellow networking peers?

Post your comments below and share them with us all.

Excuse me, can I just ask you to stop what you’re doing whilst I attempt to sell you something that you may not be interested in, open minded about or receptive to?

If you’re in business for yourself you probably get a fair amount of unsolicited telephone sales calls, emails and mail shots on a daily basis. How you react to these attempts to grab your attention and more importantly for the issuer, your cash; depends largely upon the skill of the marketer who is trying to grab your attention and your desire or need for the product/service they are attempting to sell.

There’s a whole industry out there which is geared towards creating the ultimate sales call, the perfect email or the most innovative mail shot which will grab your attention and motivate you towards a purchase.

These techniques are tried and tested and if appropriately targeted, are very powerful in themselves for generating business. You may use them yourself and if you get business from them, I’ll have no need to explain further.

However the problem with this type of marketing, often called “Interruption Marketing”, is that it’s increasing becoming ineffective for the very nature of its definition. That is to say it “interrupts” which in turn just adds to the unwanted clutter in the already cluttered lives of your average business person. As a result many of us simply switch-off to the message that is being delivered.

Angelo Fernando gives an excellent overview as to why illustrated with a scenario we can all relate to, in his article “So, Interruption Marketing Isn’t Working!” Worth reading!

Now I’m not saying that unsolicited mail-shots, emails or telemarketing doesn’t work and should be canned as a technique. This is not the case so long as such “interruptions” are targeted at named and pre-qualified individuals (by “pre-qualified” I mean that it is known that the recipient has a need or desire for the product being marketed).

However there is another technique.

Into the marketing mix comes a new upstart when it comes to using the web as a marketing tool which is a form of “Push Marketing”, namely; RSS Feeds.

RSS Feeds and Feed Readers

The best way to explain what RSS feeds are is to show you an example on a website that most Brits can relate to.

Take a look at the BBC News site at http://news.bbc.co.uk

In the top right hand corner you’ll see a little orange icon next to the link “News Feeds”

This icon and link indicates that RSS feeds are available on the site. Park this thought as I’ll explain more shortly!

Time to get your imagination working!

If you’ve decided to keep abreast of the news using the BBC News site; to ensure that you get the latest news as it’s reported, you’ll need to make sure that you visit the site every half-hour or so just to make sure you don’t miss anything.

This is fine if you’re only following the updates on one website, in this case the BBC News site; as it’s easy to make a mental note or even put a reminder in your Outlook™ or on your phone to keep re-visiting the site.

However, things start to get complicated when you follow multiple websites that update their content regularly.

For instance, let’s imagine, in addition to the BBC site, you also want to be informed of news articles as they happen on the Times website or on those favourite blogs that you like to read.

If you keep abreast of changes on many different blogs or websites, then it starts to become a chore to visit each different website in turn, read what’s new, and then move on to the next site. If you relied upon email updates then you’re going to get inundated with the things and before long you’re into “Interruption Marketing” territory and you’ll quickly start to ‘blank’ what’s being sent to you.

This is where RSS Feeds are the Killer App!

RSS feeds allow you read updates from numerous websites when it’s convenient to you in a single place i.e. on a webpage or in a piece of software on your desktop, without having to visit multiple websites.

If a website “Pushes” its content to you via an RSS feed and you may “Subscribe” to that feed, after which you can then read that content from each website in a single place using an RSS Reader when it’s convenient to you and without being interrupted by emails.

That’s what those orange feed icons are on the BBC, Times Online and Google Blog sites that I mentioned earlier, namely their RSS Feeds. By subscribing to each RSS feed in an RSS Reader (sometimes called an RSS Aggregator or RSS Newsreader) such as Google Reader, you can choose to read each favourite websites’ updates quickly and easily from one single web page which can be set as one of your browser’s Home Pages.

This is all fine and dandy as far as informational sites go; but where do RSS Feeds make an impact when it comes to marketing a product or service?

Again using your now practiced imagination, think of your own website.

Could you write content that is of value to your potential customers? Perhaps it could be reviews of your products with case studies of how they can be practically used, or perhaps you could offer tips and techniques that people in your industry would value. If you can, then start posting articles to your website. If people value your content enough they’ll start subscribing to your RSS Feed (assuming it’s set-up to produce one) which means you’ll start to get a subscriber list of people you know are interested in what you have to say. Worth its weight in marketing gold!

All this and without having to interrupt people to tell them about your company, services, products or expertise!

The client wanted to know if it was a “good deal” or a complete rip off. So I asked him to forward their proposal to me for comment.

This was an interesting exercise on two fronts. Firstly, because I was happy to give our client some honest advice with a view to helping him out: if I thought it was a good deal they were offering, I’d tell him. Secondly it allowed me to arm myself with more information about our SEO competitors with respect to how they package and present their services and their prices.

On the face of it, £75 a month for a first page listing of a website on Google sounds a good deal. After all 80% of UK searchers use Google and everyone knows that if a site isn’t on page 1 of Google’s SERPS it has a significantly reduced chance of being found and visited. So surely getting on the first page is good and £75 per month isn’t really that much is it?

Hang on a mo’ though before everyone gets carried away! Let’s dig a little deeper here and see what these guys are actually offering. Experience has taught me that “good deals” like this inevitably fall-short of what the client expects from the arrangement in the long term by which time their money has been wasted.

I examined the client’s forwarded proposal which consisted of a single email with a couple of small paragraphs and a four point bulleted list extolling the virtues of their services and the benefits of a page 1 listing on Google’s SERPS. Not particularly impressive or informative in itself.

There was nothing in there about the technique or strategy the company would be using, an important factor if the site owner is to be reassured that the deal they are entering into isn’t going to damage any existing Google listings they may have. Secondly it transpired that their “promise” only applied to one keyword phrase that the site owner nominated themselves. So in other words, for £75 per month this company promised a page one listing for only a single phrase irrespective of whether that phrase had been correctly researched or not.

An incorrectly researched phrase could be too broad or poorly targeted which at best would only attract “browsers” not “buyers” and at the worst would attract the wrong type of visitor altogether.

Thirdly it became apparent that the site owner was locked into their services if he wanted to maintain his page 1 position for his nominated phrase. Once the site owner’s contract ended with the SEO company, so does his page 1 position. That is to say; throughout the duration of the site owner’s contract with these guys, there was no ranking history being established with Google. If the client wanted to move to a different SEO company at any point the whole positioning process would have to start again.

So on behalf of our client I prepared a list of questions that would explore and hopefully address the points I’ve raised above. The client sent off my questions and a short while later, back came a reply.

As I suspected the strategy to be used was Pay-per-click (PPC) using Google Adwords™.

This allowed them to promise a page 1 listing and accounted for the loss of the position at contract end as well as the lack of positioning history. In a nutshell these guys were only selling one PPC advert marketed against one keyword phrase for £75. This advert is no doubt part of a high spending PPC account containing many different adverts for a whole list of different clients, which they run under their own name.

From the SEO company’s point of view it’s not a bad business model and I can see plenty of opportunities for making profit from individual site owners. However from the site owner’s perspective it offers little value. £75 per month for one phrase in an Adwords campaign that does not allow the site owner to manage or access themselves is not good value. The lack of effective keyword research could lead to a wasted campaign delivering little or no results for the site owner’s. For any Adwords campaign a wide range of keyword phrases need to be researched with individual adverts being written for segmented groups of phrases.

So if anyone calls your business with “good deal” promise, dig a little deeper before you sign-up. Be sure that your expectations match what will be delivered in the long term.

This fact, the subject matter and its proximity to our office, was a major motivating factor for me to attend.

By the way, as a side note: the hotel was the Gomersal Park Hotel, which has a high profile and good reputation in the local area as a ‘business class’ hotel: but it has an appalling website. I’ve made a mental note to address that with them in the not too distant future!

Back to the subject in hand: the seminar itself was delivered by a guy from a Hull based marketing and new media agency called Eskimo Soup and was on the subject of Social Media Marketing and its use as a business marketing tool.

What that means in a nutshell is how small business owners can capitalise on the benefits that social networking websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter etc can bring as promotional and marketing tools for their own businesses. Today’s 2 hour presentation concentrated on Facebook and to a lesser degree the professional networking site LinkedIn.

Now you’re probably asking yourself, “What the hell am I doing at such an event given that I’m supposed to be an Internet Consultant who should be gemmed up on all this sort-of-stuff as a matter of course?” This is particularly the case as this type of Business Link presentations are generally aimed at “newbies” or “novices” in the subject matter. Surely such events are too low-brow for me to attend?

Good question! I’m glad you’ve asked me that.

Quite simply I was there for three main reasons: above and beyond it being a free event of course. What do you take me for?

1. To Learn. Search Engine Optimisation, no problems! I’ll be happy to give a presentation on the subject myself, however Social Media Marketing (SMM) is new territory for me. So like the rest of the candidates at today’s session. I was there to learn, albeit from a somewhat higher starting point than some people there today no doubt. And before you ask; yes, I did pick some useful tips and techniques.
2. Networking. Events like this are great if as an attendee to such events, you offer a similar or complimentary service to the subject matter of the presentation. In my case how such reasoning translates is: My business provides website promotion and development. The event is aimed at people who have a need for such as services and as such are open minded to the concept of promoting or enhancing their website for the purposes of growing their business. The fact they are there at this event, tells me this. Put the two together and you have fellow attendees who are likely to be in the market for my company’s services.Viola! A great opportunity for business with pre-qualified business owners.
3. To Emulate. One of the strategies I have for my business is to become a presenter for the likes of Business Link and other business support groups. The money’s not bad and it’s an excellent way to present oneself as an “expert” and as such build credibility in the minds’ of potential clients.However before I can run I need to walk by watching and learning from other presenters doing what I want to do.Today’s presenter had a nice delivery style for what can be a very dry subject. I felt he pitched it a reasonable level so as not to lose the complete ‘novices’ whilst keeping the interest of the more experienced social media activist in the room. He also did a good job of fielding off a couple of questions from one of the more audible candidates, which could have easily taken him off at a tangent screwing up his schedule in the process

Today’s presentation has been uploaded to the web by the presenter, Chris Middleton at Eskimo Soup. View it for yourself by clicking on the link below.

Online Social Networks. The Future of Marketing?

If you’re already connected on the various social media websites, take the time to connect with me: I’ll always respond.

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