I’ve been self-employed for over 10 years, and I started networking fairly early in my self-employed life.
My first experience of in-person networking was going to a Ladies Who Latte meeting within the first month of becoming a freelancer. It was an event where we met other business owners over a cup of tea, and we each had 1 minute to explain what our business was about and pass round business cards or leaflets.
I went one month and asked people about their marketing challenges. The next month I went along with a one page flyer with a social media training offer. And ended up with a client who I taught how to use Facebook to market her beauty treatment business.
What people don’t always realise about networking
That’s not a typical networking experience though, I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time with a very specific offer that I’d crafted based on the challenges people said they had with marketing. It can take months to see the benefits of networking, and it doesn’t necessarily benefit you in the way you expect.
What a lot of people don’t appreciate about networking is that it’s not about selling to the people in the room. (And when I say ‘room’ I also mean virtual room, as there are also many online networking events.) Depending on what you do and what sort of groups you network with, your ideal clients may not be in that room.
The purpose of networking
The purpose of networking is to find clients, but to do that by building relationships with the people you network with. I was very lucky with my first networking experience that it brought me a client almost immediately. But of course that turned out to be a one-off and it took me a long time to realise why that was!
So while networking can be about selling your services (or products) to the people in the room, networking is really about:
- Finding people who know people or businesses of the type you work with, so that they can refer them to you
- Finding people who work with the same types of clients you work with, so that you can refer clients to each other
- And if your services work well together, there might be an opportunity for a collaboration
- Finding people who can help with challenges you have in your business
And in order for those people to be confident in referring clients to you, or for you to use their services, you have to get to know each other, decide whether you like each other and might want to work together, and build trust in each other’s work and way of doing business.
Networking and communities
Relationship building is the reason that online (and in-person) communities are so valuable. I belong to a few online communities, some of which I pay a membership fee to belong to, some of which are free Facebook groups. These types of groups are often non-promotional spaces, which means that you don’t jump in every day and share your new special offer or ask for clients.
What you do is help others with their problems, turn up to online or in-person events, and generally get to know others and support them with what they are doing. Then when someone asks ‘does anyone know an accountant who helps pig farmers with their tax problems?’, people can mention you, or you can say ‘yes that’s me!’ Or when someone has an idea and needs some specific expertise to make it happen, you’re one of the people that pops into their head as a possible collaborator.
What happens if you can’t find like-minded people to network with?
Well you could set up your own event. That’s something I’ve done a few times over the years.
I helped found a ‘Tweetup’ (Twitter users in-person meetup) back in 2012-13 (that one was to find members for our new Rotary Club rather than do business networking, but it did introduce us to lots of interesting local people). I once set up a writers meetup to see if there were any other people locally who were writing. I co-hosted or organised both of these for quite a few events until they’d run their natural course.
I’m currently considering setting up a new online networking event, but I’ll decide on this based on the conversations I have in the market research that I’m doing over the next few weeks. I may want to find someone else to co-host it with me, so that’s something I am mulling over as well.
So those are my thoughts on networking – do you have anything to add from your own experience of networking? Please do comment below or on the social media post where you found this article.
If you’re thinking of setting up your own networking event and would like to talk through your idea, booking one of my 1 hour clarity calls might be useful to you. You can contact me here for more details.
Image by Monika Warunek from Pixabay