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How to Overcome Stumbling Blocks to Successful Networking

The ability to connect with people is essential to the success of your business. Professional networking events can present you with opportunities to interact with others in business on a personal level, and this can develop profitable relationships. These occasions are critical for anyone who wants to grow a business or promote a career.

Many people are simply not comfortable walking into a room full of strangers and starting up a conversation, but there are some simple ways to get around that fear.

Stumbling Blocks to Successful Networking

Related: How to Network Like a Boss

Here are five common stumbling blocks to successful networking, and some ways to help you overcome them.

1. Reluctance to talk to strangers

We’re all taught at an early age not to talk to strangers because “It’s just not safe.” In certain situations, this is still good advice. In business, however, talking to strangers is the best way to generate interest and support for your products and services. If you only talk to the people that you already know, you’ll definitely miss out on opportunities to make new connections and establish valuable contacts.

To get past your fear of talking to strangers, set a goal for yourself before you attend any networking event. Decide how many new contacts you want to make, or how many “strangers” you want to meet. In some cases, you could even make a list of people that you’d like to meet.

Next, think of some icebreakers or conversation starters. Prepare questions that you can ask anyone you meet at the event. You might want to ask about other people’s business, their connection to the sponsoring organization or their opinion of the venue.

2. Lack of a formal introduction

It’s a whole lot easier to make a new contact when there’s someone else to handle the introduction and pave the way for you. If you wait for another person to make that move, you might not meet anyone. At networking events, the goal is to meet as many new people as possible.

This is the time to take the bull by the horns, walk up to people you don’t know, introduce yourself and start a conversation! You can easily do this if you’ve prepared your ‘self-introduction’ in advance.

You shouldn’t introduce yourself the same way to every person. Maybe it’s your first time attending an association meeting. In that case, you might want to say that as part of your introduction. Let people know who you are, why you are there and give them a reason to ask more about you.

3. Fear of being seen as ‘pushy’

Maybe you think you’ll turn people off if you’re assertive, and that if they want to talk to you, they’ll make the first move. If this is your line of thinking you’ll very likely find yourself spending a lot of time alone at the reception or meeting function and leave without a single new connection. Being open, friendly and interested does not turn people off.

You won’t come across as overly aggressive if you seek out the “approachable” people. These are the ones who are standing alone or who are speaking in groups of three or more. Two people talking to each other are not approachable because they may be having a private conversation and you could very well be interrupting.

4. Thinking that other people may not like you

There is always the risk that the other person is not interested in you and doesn’t want to meet or talk to you. It happens. If that is the case, don’t take it personally. Nothing ventured is nothing gained. When you get a cold shoulder, smile, move on and say to yourself, “Next?”

5. Having your intentions misunderstood

Approaching someone of the opposite sex to begin a conversation can seem more like flirting than networking. This is more of an issue for women than it is for men. Women have an equal place in the work environment and need to make professional connections just like men do. Women in business can no longer afford to hold back when there is an opportunity to meet new people.

Neither men nor women will have their motives misinterpreted if they present themselves professionally and if they keep the conversation focused on business issues or topics that are not personal or private.

Whatever your stumbling blocks, face them before the next networking event and devise a personal plan for getting past them. Once you do, you connect with confidence and courtesy on every occasion and the results will definitely be reflected in your bottom line.

Why You Should Network with Current Customers

One of the best ways to get new customers is to network with those that you’ve done business with. Your previous customers are valuable to the life of your future business.

As you get each new customer, you want to network with that customer again in the future to keep your business in their mind and to keep them on as a walking and talking billboard for your business.

The future of your business needs to evolve to include repeat customers and referral customers, both of whom are vital to the ongoing relationship of your business, the consumer, and the local surroundings of your business.

So now you ask; “How can I network with previous customers?” It’s easier than you might think!

Read: How to Network Like a Boss

Even if your customers are online, you can still network with them. A simple note, or email will do the trick. Refer to them by name, and offer helpful, metered advice. Chat with your customers about the care and maintenance of what they have purchased from you, or what work you have done for them. Ask if there is anything that can be done to improve the process they went through while dealing with your business.

Network with your clients by taking them to lunch, or doing something out of the ‘ordinary’ to express your appreciation for their business. As you continue to acknowledge those clients, they’ll keep you fresh in their minds. They’ll tell others about how you thanked them, and how they feel about your business.

The internet business is going to use newsletters, emails and special offers sent to previous customers as ways of networking and keeping in touch with those customers. Keeping the lines of communication open with a customer is going to increase awareness of your products and services. This in turn is will increase sales, one repeat customer at a time.

In business you can network with previous customers by creating mailing lists and using them with a great CRM to stay in touch. Offering helpful tips about the care and maintenance of a product they purchased with you, or making helpful recommendations for its use are great ways to stay in touch, and your customer will greatly appreciate the effort.

Learn more on how you can maintain good relationships with your previous customers through follow-ups using email automation at www.smallbizdream.com.

4 Ways To Become an Email Marketing Ninja

Despite all the other methods of marketing and selling, email is still king of the road. It’s what drives a lot of businesses, both online and offline. And if you’re not using email to communicate and sell to your customers then why the heck not?

It’s probably because you’ve never really considered the power of a consistent, follow-up email sequences. Or maybe you don’t know how. It’s actually a lot easier than you think.

But first let’s take you back a bit. I’m going to take you back to the time you were overjoyed when you got email. There was that ping of anticipation, the little swirly icon, and then you’d click on it, and wait for it to open.

Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case. Fast forward to present. Answering emails is probably the last thing you want to do.

The average person gets 84 emails a day, not including the Facebook Messages, the LinkedIn Messages, the Tweets, the Snapchats, and whatever else there is. There are probably a million things you prefer to do than wade through email wasteland.

It’s almost impossible to respond to 84 messages a day, let alone read them, so you have to be a ‘marketing ninja’ to stand out. You just need to train to do those back flips and karate chops!

How do you do that? I’m glad you asked. Luckily I’ve come up with a number of things you can do to become a master.

Strategy

Before you send a single email you need an overall strategy. Like anything else, if you fly by the seat of your pants then you’re not going to be effective. You have to always ask how it would benefit your audience. What message are you trying to send? Take your time to stop and think about your approach and execution.

It may help to first draw out the sequence of emails on a piece of paper, detailing every one you want to send to your customers or potential customer. Then write down the action you want them to take. You should strategize at least three months in advance and know exactly what you want to say. As your business changes, it’s possible to change your strategy. But as they say ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.’

Content

Obviously the content of your email is the most important part. Starting with your subject line. If your emails are boring, nobody will read them.
I know, the truth hurts sometimes. But if you train your customers that you’re awesome and your writing is going to be entertaining then you’ll have people salivating over your email content.

Another thing you can do is what in the ‘biz’ is called the open loop. That is kind of like writing an episode of Game of Thrones. And it can be that much fun to both read and write. The point of the open loop email is to keep your reader engaged and to end with a ‘cliffhanger’. Of course you want your readers to come away with a great story but there should also be a business moral that will lead them to buy for you.

The open loop is an extremely effective way of being a email ninja and one that most businesses don’t deploy effectively. Of course it’s just one type of content you can use. There are far too many to cover here.

Personalization

The more you know about your email list, the better and more ‘valuable’ it is. The more you can customize it to a specific person the better. If you know a particular person likes a certain beer, then you can craft a message around it. The same for coffee, restaurants or sports. Segmented lists and dynamic content really show your audience that you’ve thought about their needs and care about building a personal relationship with them, even if it’s automated. We’ll get into it next.

There are a couple ways of segmenting your email list. You can send your existing list a survey and then record those responses. You can create different landing pages each with a different message. Or you can run different contests to see which people respond to. Be creative!

Automation

This is by far my favorite tip. I love automation! Why? Because it makes life so much easier. Why do all the work over and over again when you only have to do it once? Your customers won’t know the difference unless you do it poorly. Remember to personalize it! (Hint we just talked about it!) If you personalize and segment your list correctly, then your customer will feel special and privileged.

There are many ways to do this. Most email marketing companies have a way you can create auto responders that will automatically trigger when you add somebody to a list.

Conclusion

With only 39% of retailers send personalized product information to their customers there is obviously great room for improvement! Just by adding good email strategy and follow up, you can double or triple your sales!

How to Use Hashtags for Your Small Business Marketing

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve probably noticed that the number of businesses who utilize social media as a marketing medium has grown in massive numbers.

Now…for the purpose of our business, we’ve found that there are a couple of mediums that give us greater latitude, and much bigger “bang for our marketing buck” with regard to creativity than do others. And you might find the same goes for your own business social media purposes. In trying out the various platforms, we generally suggest that you find out which works best, and focus on those.

Twitter for instance, utilizes text to 140 characters, so if your message is text focused, and you can get that message (or a tantalizing part of that message) across in less than that, it’s a kick ass way to go, but creativity still rules. Simply said, the fact that you’re only ‘allowed’ 140 characters on Twitter can create the need to include links to whatever website or blog the rest of your information is located on.

What exactly IS a ‘hashtag’?

Hashtags have become so common these days that people have started using them outside of their intended purpose. People use them in text messages, chats, songs, and advertisements.

A “hashtag” is more simply described as a word preceded by the number sign (#).You’ll see them across a variety of different social networks like Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, and occasionally on Facebook. When Pinterest first came out in 2010 there was a lot of confusion about hashtags and how they were being used on that platform.

Hashtags (#) are used for the purpose of locating people/industries/topics that you and/or your company might be interested in following/communicating with, etc. Whenever a user adds a hashtag to their post, it is immediately indexed by the social network and searchable by other users. Once someone clicks on that hashtag, they’ll be brought to a page that aggregates all of the posts with the same hash tagged keyword in real-time.

Those hashtags in the Instagram platform serve the same purpose, even though it’s primarily an image driven vehicle (no pun intended there). Using hashtags within those messages also brings WAY more eyeballs than those posted without them (it’s astonishing just how much traffic a simple hashtag can bring).

So now you ask, “how do I know which hashtags I should be using for my business?” There are a couple of really simple answers to this question;

1. When it comes to hashtags, common sense generally prevails. Using a business related word and simply prefixing it with a “#” is generally one of the best ways to start testing out some favorites.

2. When it doubt, Google it. Search for popular hashtags related to your business on Google! Google is a super helpful resource, and you can find any number of hashtag lists for use on your preferred social media platform, for just about any business you dare to search. Do some testing and tweaking. Figure out which hashtags work best on which platform for your business, and get to it!

Despite the problems I have outlined in this book, I believe that the future of small business is bright. Regardless of what your customer’s needs are, there’s one universal way to explode your sales, and keep that customer coming back, and/or referring your business; Keeping in touch. By ‘keeping in touch’ I’m not saying that you should badger your customer incessantly with mindless chatter. By “keeping in touch”, you’re simply, periodically putting yourself at the forefront of your customer’s mind with timely, helpful, metered communication.

Now you ask, “what exactly IS timely, helpful, metered communication”? Well ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to tell you. Go grab a java, take a seat in a big comfy chair, and read on.

Let’s say you’re in the real estate business. Obviously your customers aren’t buying real estate the way they’d buy say…socks (or maybe they are). Just because a client makes one real estate purchase doesn’t mean that the ‘sale’ is done when your commission cheque clears, but your client very likely has friends. And what do you think happens when those friends are buying property? They ask a friend for a referral. And if you don’t position yourself in such a way that there really ISN’T anyone else that your client can think of when asked for that referral, your sales, and therefore your commissions will have no other avenue but to jump exponentially.

Sounds great, right? I mean, who doesn’t want to make more money, while helping a client remember to do helpful things with regard to their real estate purchase? If you could in addition, have those helpful reminders to go out on a set schedule, so much the better, right?

Implementing a simple ‘system’ for reaching out to those customers automatically makes the task of keeping in touch one of the more simple tasks that you undertake in your business, instead of one that you dread for how difficult it can be.

If your business is a restaurant, keeping in touch is even more simple, by sending out ‘reminders’ of regular specials and special events happening in your establishment. It’s easy to keep your income pipeline full, when you’re at the forefront of the minds of your customers, regulars or not.

Making the task of staying in touch even simpler, why not implement a mobile CRM to your marketing strategy? That way your business doesn’t need to rely on you having time to sit down at a computer to do your ‘staying in touch’ tasks.

Cool, right?

How All the Social Media Experts Got it Wrong

We all know email is a powerful tool to follow up with your prospects and customers but social media can be equally as powerful if you use it correctly. The problem is that most so-called experts have it dead wrong! They think it’s about posting as frequently as possible when in fact, it’s about having a clear, concise message and engaging people through proper follow up.

Now let’s be clear, as with all types of messages: DON’T SPAM people! What’s the difference between proper messaging and spamming?

The key is to provide value and message them about something they are ACTUALLY interested in! Don’t talk about yourself like some egoistical fool! Engage them with information that is relevant and important to their business.
How do you do that?

You want your follow up to be semi-automated so you set up a series with a very specific idea of what you intend to say and then begin with a line that is completely custom. Then you copy and paste it in your Facebook messenger or LinkedIn messenger and you send it.

I talked to someone who was using social media as part of her sales funnel. She was posting messaging in Facebook groups but she wasn’t individually messaging them and she wasn’t following up with them. When you use any sort of sales message you need to follow up, politely but firmly.

If you think that by posting into groups is going to work, then you’re not studying how Facebook works anymore. Two percent of people are seeing what you post and it’s about to go to one percent! Two percent of all your Facebook group people, unless they specifically go to your Facebook group and look what’s there, won’t see your message. Facebook has strictly become a pay to play network! Most of your connections won’t see what you’ve written on your news feed. The problem is if you’re relying on groups and posts for all your communications, you’re missing out on a lot.

Isn’t it interesting that social networking has made a bunch of things easier, but has made us so lazy that we don’t follow up, we think because they joined our Facebook group, anything we post there, they’re seeing and they’ll take action

The good news is that it’s still relatively inexpensive to boost a post. It’s definitely worth it to spend a couple bucks on each post to make sure people are seeing it. The added benefit of boosting a post is that you also increases the organic post. They piggyback off of each other. Many times if I boost a post for seven bucks I get over a 500 organic reach. Not bad for the price of a Triple Venti Mocha!

If you’re smart, you’ll use a customer management tool that actually reminds you to restart the conversation when you’ve not been in contact for awhile. Once you come to the realization of how important that is, you’ll be swatting away the customers!

Everybody out there it’s all excited about social media, but nobody is figuring out that if you engage someone on Facebook messenger, it has to follow up just as much as you would on the telephone or by email.

With messaging everything should be a series to get them connected over time. Yes, when we were talking that someone by direct message on LinkedIn or direct message on Instagram or Snapchat or anything, everybody is sending one message and then that’s it! They give up!

As a small business owner I know you’re busy and you have a lot of things on your plate. That’s why you need a system that does all your thinking and the legwork for you. The CRM tool reinitiates conversations and says ‘hey, you need to talk to this guy again! It has been six days and go here to remind you and this is what you need to say to reengage him!’

If you follow these rules and strategies, you’ll have more clients than you’ll know what to do with and you’ll need help managing all the leads you get. Small Business Dream can help you. For just $99 a month, you can manage all your customers and make sure that you keep them engaged! We can do that through both email and social media campaigns that you can completely customize!