Social Networking Tips

Create Relationships Faster

If you are going to networking meetings, like most business owners, you probably have stacks of business cards sitting around and on your desk.  Do you realize you are literally sitting on a “gold mine”? For January make it a game to get all your business cards working for you.

Ever go to a networking meeting or been given a referral then put it into a database only to have it just sit there doing nothing?Or maybe you even made the initial contact but the lead really went no where.

It has been proven the average time to take a prospect to a sales is 8 contacts.Most people stop contacting prospects after the 2^nd contact.Often times we look to find the instant sale and we miss out on the most important part and that is the relationship.Relationships take time.Once developed the right relationship can be extremely profitable.

When you make the time to continuously follow up with people you meet, you build powerful relationships while quickly finding out which leads are potential clients.More importantly, you get new business and referrals.

4 ways you can create relationships faster with your contacts:

1. Immediately after meeting someone find as many ways to connect with them.  Within the first 24 hours, send a thank you card, send an email
   thank you and call for a meeting.

2. Put them in your database and for every action you make with this prospect (a call, an email, direct mail, etc) create another action.

3. Get creative with what you send.  What would be exciting for you to
   receive?

4. Focus on 100 people you want to do business with and continuously market to those people. Many times we think we need thousands of people to contact over and over again.  In reality all the business we ever
   would need comes from 100 key contacts.
   

It takes time and money to go to networking events. Why not maximize your investment by creating a continuous follow up program.The more a contact gets to know you the more likely they will be to send you referrals and send you business.It is not the big things that you do here and there that generate results, it is the consistent things you do everyday that make a difference.

You are invited to an online class for FREE (a $97 value) on how to build Strategies so you can leverage Social Networking to grow your business. www.FreeSocialNetworkingTraining.com

How did you like this Social Networking Article? Please leave us a comment. BONUS! Would you like to learn more about how to grow your business using a Social Networking system?Get your free Social Networking video training by going to: www.FreeSocialNetworkingTraining.com

Tags: building relationships, business cards, business owners, database marketing, entrepreneurs, marketing, marketing tips, networking, professional speaker, sabrina gibson, sales, Social Networking, Social Networking Articles, target market

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Social Networking Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.