Which business networking event is right for you?
Long train journeys, airport departure lounges, corporate hospitality events, product launches, conferences – all offer the chance to start a conversation with someone who may become a valuable contact.
In fact, any place where people gather offers a potential networking opportunity.
Wherever you go, have your business card to hand and be ready with a brief but impressive summary of what you do and how you may be able to help someone else. But avoid the hard sell – networking is about building and cultivating relationships.
If you want to take a more targeted approach to networking, there are many groups specifically set up to help professionals foster business relationships, but how do you decide which one to go to?
What do you want to get out of it?
First it’s vital to work out what you want to achieve through your networking activity and the sort of people you want to meet, as this will help determine the type of events you should go to.
- Do you want to meet potential clients and get commissions for work?
- Are you looking for a new job?
- Do you want to make contact with other people in your line of work?
- Are you looking for respect from your peers?
- Do you want to meet other people running small businesses and chat about issues that are complicating your lives?
“If you’re looking to change jobs or you want to get to know more people in your own business, then events run by industry associations and professional bodies are a good place to start,” explains Luke Cunliffe, principal of Cunliffe Associates, a training and development consultancy specialising in business networking.
Conferences, seminars and workshops also offer a ready-made pool of networking contacts. There, you can meet other people in your industry or profession, get to know the bosses or senior partners in other companies and put out feelers for vacancies that might be coming up.
“If you are self-employed or a smaller business or professional looking to win clients, it makes sense to go to one of the groups that accepts only one person from each profession, so there’s no danger of your competitors turning up,” adds Luke Cunliffe.
These encourage members to nurture long-term relationships and you might well be the only accountant, lawyer, web designer, physiotherapist, plumber or photographer that the other people in the group know. Once you have come to understand and trust each other, they will recommend you to friends and colleagues. You are expected to do the same for them.
Most of these will allow you to visit meetings before you commit to signing up as a member.
BNI
BNI (Business Networking International) is one such organisation and has groups – known as chapters – all over the UK. You get to know the other members in your group through regular breakfast meetings and then keep an eye out for opportunities to generate referrals for them. Members attending meetings give a “60-second speech” to describe the service they offer as well as having longer one-to-one conversations. Each chapter accepts only one member from each profession.
It works well for sole traders and people wanting to meet other small business owners and for those whose business proposition is simple enough to be explained in a tight time slot.
You have to pay to join a group and commit to attending regularly, bringing referrals or visitors throughout your membership. It has a slightly cultish reputation as members are asked not to join other networking groups, but BNI insists this is so that you can focus on generating referrals for members of your chapter.
Business Referral Exchange (BRX)
BRX holds structured meetings rather like BNI, but the organisation has no objection to your joining other formal networking groups.
4Networking
Similar to the above with structured breakfast meetings offering scheduled one-to-one appointments.
NRG
NRG Business Networks runs a similar style of facilitated business networking events based on advocacy and referral. Meetings take place over lunch, which can cut into the business day somewhat but is great for people who don’t like getting up in the morning.
Rotary clubs
Rotary is working hard to shake off its image as being packed with older, white men. Its focus is on charity work and fund-raising, promising a sense of achievement as well as the chance to work, socialise and network as part of a team.
Institute of Directors (IoD)
The IoD holds networking events all over the UK, mainly attended by (predominantly male and suit-wearing) directors of SMEs.
Federation of Small Businesses
The FSB is the UK’s biggest lobbying group for small businesses and offers support to members including legal advice and discounted services. Its networking events are popular and well-attended.
Chambers of Commerce
Most local chambers run regular networking groups, and they can be an excellent way to meet people from bigger companies who don’t attend other networking groups.
The Athena Network
Athena is a women-only networking group that aims to put like-minded businesswomen together. Membership offers the chance to make connections with professionals in a wide range of industries; to develop business skills through interactive workshops and training courses, and to inspire and support others. Contact building and networking are a big part of why people join Athena, although the organisation doesn’t pressurise members to generate referrals for each other.
The Women’s Business Club
This is similar, holding monthly lunch meetings in various locations around the UK, focused on collaboration and peer group support to help women develop their businesses. Members share expertise and experience, pool resources and generate contacts. Premier clubs accept membership from only one representative of each business type.
Ecademy
Ecademy is chiefly an online network but it also organises live events around the UK.
Speed Networking Events
If you have a clear role or service that can be explained simply and your goal is to meet a wide range of people and collect a lot of business cards, you might like to try speed networking, where you have a rapid succession of three-minute one-to-one meetings during the course of a morning or afternoon. Be warned: it’s not for the faint-hearted.
It is a cheaper option than joining the long-running groups and you don’t have to commit to attending regularly. However, collecting a large number of cards from people you can barely remember the next day (and who may well have forgotten you), may be far less valuable in the long run than taking time to get to know a few people better.
If your proposition is a complex or technical one, it may be hard to describe it adequately in a short time – though it is very good practice to try to do so.
Luke Cunliffe concludes: “You never know when you’re going to meet someone who may end up landing you a large contract, introducing you to your next employer or giving you ideas that add great value to your business – and you need to ensure that you make a great impression on them when you do.”
Network Marketing Lies – What You Need To Know About The MLM Lies Scam
A revolution is well underway in the MLM world and it’s called internet network marketing. But many are “missing the boat” simply because they were hurt by network marketing lies in the past.
The thing to remember is that network marketers will often return to the industry despite failing previously and many achieve success after several attempts.
If you have tried MLM before and failed then the chances you will make a “better fist of it” this time around lies in using the internet to expand your prospecting umbrella. Internet network marketing has literally changed businesses overnight with people reporting the ability to be able to target more than one or two prospects at any given time.
In fact, they now have the ability to target thousands at any one time and that’s not an understatement. But this doesn’t mean network marketing is an easy business to succeed in. And it also doesn’t mean that you abandon off line recruiting. It still needs to be part of your prospecting.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the network marketing lies that you may have run into before and a solution that can see you turn things around.
Network Marketing Lies
If you’re currently network marketing or have tried it in the past then see if any of these “lies” resonate with you:
1. Everyone is your prospect
2. Anyone can do this
3. we’ll build your business for you
4. It’s not really sales – we just share products
The first lie for example has given network marketing the bad rap. Treating everyone as a prospect is unprofessional, untargeted and will will get you blacklisted by friends and family.
There is many a network marketer who has adopted this approach bearing the scars of rejection and banished to the MLM scrap heap.
Everyone Is Not Your Prospect
The truth is, everyone is not a prospect simply because everyone is not looking for a business opportunity. And by using haphazard prospecting methods like this, rejection becomes a huge issue because people hate hearing no and if they hear it often enough within a short period, they’ll do the natural thing and bail out.
So what’s the answer? Simple…putting your offer in front of a market hungry to hear it. And this is where the internet comes in. Targeting your audience means you will have genuine home business seekers responding, people who actually want to hear what you have to say.
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Title: MLM Network Marketing – What You Need to Know Before You Get Involved
MLM Network Marketing, instantly the term seem to be familiar with but the intricacies strength ease not be that conspicuous and clear. Do we rattling understand the literal functionality offered finished this structure? In actuality, the construct offer many significant benefits as compared to any other network or individualist businesses.
You strength have attended such seminars which vindicate you about the MLM Network Marketing or Marketing finished MLM Network. For most of us, the reality is meet the word of mouth and the literal ins and outs are inferior known.This way of doing business is kind of the fastest ontogeny business because it relies on a transfer methodology; that is transfer of the creation or the services from Point A to Point B. This type of business has a few negative encounters in the past and had long impact on those who were into this but the construct has again grown and become the voice of new business arena.
Marketing MLM Network completely depends upon how you are making up your further customers kinda what is exactly taught is how exactly we deal our services and products with others. It is definitely different from the Pyramid schemes in which the mortal will rest on top and rest who joins the group later will rest at lower network. You market yourself, you get the returns.
It meet follows a chain finished you in which you market the creation and verify the creation from Point A to Point B. Hence the creation moves from digit verify to another level, that’s why it is also called Multi Level Marketing.
You acquire different products from the wholesaler offered at wholesale prices, you directly verify that into market and sell it in retail and attain money out of it. One misconception which should not be entertained is that every time you sell the product, you need not to sell it in retail; you need to deal it with people and attain them as your customers.
It is about building a big aggroup of yours and the sales are an outcome. And slowly you crapper actually expand in multiple directions kinda than only in a single direction. You crapper simply talk to people and recruit them for your job, train them how to build the business further, you’re done. Gradually, your aggroup expands as your immediate recruits start building the business.
There are lots of services that are being sold finished MLM Network Marketing. For every flourishing movement of the creation from digit verify to another or depending upon the financial strategies, you are compensated.
Breakage. What Every MLM Professional Needs to Know About
“Breakage” is money that is kept by an MLM company that could have been paid to its hard working distributors. In network marketing, there’s front end breakage and there’s back end breakage (or compensation plan breakage). This article will discuss compensation plan breakage.
Compensation plan breakage is, as its name suggests, taken out of the compensation plan. Many MLM companies say that they payout 50%, 60%, 70% of the price of the product to distributors. But in reality, they only pay out 30% to 40%. So what happened to the rest of money? It, of course, went to the company.
One way to NOT payout the full amount promised is to have a “leadership bonus” that almost nobody can qualify for. Here’s good example…
Let’s say that an MLM company has a leadership bonus of three percent (3%) on all of your volume. To qualify for this leadership bonus, you have to have six legs (6) all turning over $10,000 of volume per leg, each month. So that’s at least $60,000 in monthly turn over to qualify for this leadership bonus.
Now let’s say that you do have six legs. Not all of them are doing the required $10,000, but three of them are doing $30,000 each in volume every month. So that’s at least $90,000 of revenue that your team is responsible for bringing in to this company.
BUT, the policy clearly says to qualify for the leadership bonus, you must have six legs that are all doing $10,000. So that’s 3% in volume commissions that has not been paid to you. Where did that money go? To the company.
That 3% leadership bonus was figured into the pay plan at the very beginning, when the company launched. Rarely will they pay out that leadership bonus. Very few people will qualify for it, which means the company is keeping a lot of money that could have been paid to lower ranked but hard working distributors.
That’s just one example of compensation plan breakage. Breakage is inherent in some types of compensation plans.
For instance, some binary compensation plans are notorious for it. A binary compensation plan only allows distributors to have two legs. A left leg and a right leg. Many binary plan companies only pay bonuses on the weak leg, or the leg that’s generating the least volume and nothing on the strong leg. They do that to encourage distributors to have a balanced volume between the two legs. But, at the end of the day, any commissions not paid on volume generated by distributors, is breakage.
Another compensation plan where there is inherently high breakage is the unilevel plan. Most unilevel compensation plans only pay down to a certain level, say 6, 7 or 8 levels deep. That means the volume generated by distributors below this level, which could be a significant part of your business, is not paid to you. Where does it go? To the company of course.
Some experts will argue that compensation plans with breakage will reward the producers more generously than a plans without breakage, allowing the company to give more to the distributors who are doing the greatest amount of work. There is an element of truth in that, no doubt about it.
But there are many companies out there that just want to make an extra buck out of their distributors. They scheme to get as much breakage as they can with unrealistic qualifications and unreasonable volume qualifications. These schemes actually rob the part time distributors who make up the vast majority of the distributor force and sustain these companies.
There are however, a minority of good MLM companies who look for ways to minimise breakage with plans that not only reward those at the top but also ensure the part timers in the field also get a check.
So please do your due diligence and understand MLM company compensation plans and business models before you commit for the long term.