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Top Ten Tips to Effective Networking

Here are our top ten tips to help you become a highly successful net worker:

1. Be consistent in your networking – don’t only network when you need new business or new contacts. You want to have those contacts in place already when you need them.

2. Be targeted – know why you are networking and attend the appropriate groups accordingly.

3. Consider it part of your marketing plan – whether you are marketing your business or yourself as part of a larger organisation. Take time to schedule events into your diary and make them a priority.

4. Follow through on promises – make sure you send on information or make introductions you said you would, preferably within 24 hours. If you don’t, your reputation will not be worth much and others will be less inclined to help you in the future.

5. Become known – turn up at events regularly. This is how relationships and trust are built up. We are all more comfortable recommending someone we have met more than once.

6. Be interested – seek first to understand others than to be understood yourself. Yes, you are there to let others know about you and your services, but they are much more likely to listen if they feel that you are genuinely interested in also.

7. Be organised – keep records of who you met and where. This may be in a software package or simply by writing information on business cards before you file them away.

8. Give first, receive second, – and actively look for opportunities to help others that you meet. Don’t only expect the leads to come towards you.

9. Don’t try to sell. Networking is about building relationships, not about direct selling. Or course the opportunity to sell your services to another member of the same group may arise and that is fabulous – but it shouldn’t be your sole aim.

10. Have fun, relax and enjoy the event.