Building & Leveraging your Network

"I'd rather have 1 percent of the efforts of 100 people, than 100 percent of my own efforts."
- By J. Paul Getty (also attributed to John D. Rockefeller - either way, good reliable sources!)

A training tape I heard years ago mentioned that Macy's training program stated the secret to business success is to do the following 3 things:

1. Do everything
2. Be everywhere
3. Astonish the Customer

Of the three, the last one is probably the easiest because if you demonstrate your "wow factor" to your potential client, you will certainly do more business. 

The second can largely be addressed by the Internet (a good website) where it can handle your marketing, customer services, sales, help desk, resources 24/7 for pennies a day. What it can't do is work on your behalf in the non-virtual (real) world. That is where your network comes in.

These are the folks that talk or connect your target market so they can promote you when you are not there. They might be:

1. Businesses that have your same target market but that provide a different product or service. This also solves the fact the you don't do EVERYTHING, that you can connect people to other business that do what you don't do. Being a resource is a great way to be of service to someone. We call these business "power parnters". 
2. Your connections on-line (social media) and off (networking). They might not have the same target market as you however can still can be a great source of referred business. 
3. Your current customers. Referrals (word-of-mouth) are a great marketing strategy. 

To make any of these work well, you need to engage a system that will allow your network to make referrals easily and will thank (or reward) them for the referrals. This again is can be optimized with a little planning and automation through technology. Take a look at this video for an idea on how to use leave-behinds and a website to introduce your contacts to your "power partners" (and vice versa).

The second video demonstrates a form that can be used to make it easy for power partners, clients or contact to refer business to you. We use this form extensively at our on-line referral site: CallTheBest.biz