I get asked to speak to many sales teams in the MLM arena on the topic of Business Networking: How to maximize the time and money you spend networking and how to turn those “chance” encounters into profitable relationships. In a couple weeks I will be speaking to a group of energetic MLM’ers who are working on their end-of-year and new years business plan.
In past blogs we discovered the true meaning of Business Networking: The sharing of information, ideas, and resources; not SELLING!! There are several reasons people struggle to get results from their networking efforts:
- The “uninformed networkers” continue to SELL because they don’t know what else to do.
- They never stopped to think about creating a plan for their networking.
- There is no measurable accountability to their networking efforts.
Here’s the thing…Since the purpose of networking is to share information, ideas, and resources, why not enter the event with a couple dates and times in mind before you attend the event that you can schedule a brief one-on-one with someone you just met so you can find out if there is a way you can support each other in business. This may sound simple but without preparation it is not.
Since I will be discussing business planning for 2016, I will start with the first two steps I believe a good plan should follow:
- Income goal
- Yearly
- Divide Yearly goal by how many weeks you actually plan on working. Sometimes as Entrepreneurs we believe we can work whenever/wherever; however, I don’t think planning our income goal on a 52-week year is the best practice. In my business plan this year I took a look at trips I already have planned, weeks that have a holiday in it, subtracted other weeks that I know my target market usually takes off or travels, etc. I came up with a 40-week work year. Dividing my yearly goal by 40 weeks instead of 52 will give me a much more realistic chance of hitting my yearly goal.
- Daily goal: Divide your “weekly” goal by 5 to get a daily goal. Again, as Entrepreneurs, we can literally work 7 days a week; however, it doesn’t mean that our target market works every single day. I am basing my weekly goal on 5 days per week, which will give me a greater probability of reaching the weekly goal.
- How many sales does it take to meet your daily goal?
- How many presentations does it take to meet your daily sales goal?
- Networking goal: There is a lot of planning that needs to take place in this section. Here are a few things to consider:
- Where do your clients/customers come from? Referral, Networking events, Organizations?
- Who is your ideal client? What is their age? What do they do for a living? What do they like to do in their spare time?
- Where does your ideal client hang out? Go there!!
- Who else do you know in business that doesn’t compete with yours that has identified the same ideal client that you could team up with?
- What are you doing to improve your networking skills? “Your greatness is limited only by the investments you make in yourself”–Grant Cardone
- How many people to you need to meet on a daily basis to add to your pipeline to meet your daily/weekly/yearly sales goals?
Once you have the answers to the above steps you can lay it over your calendar so you can plan out your networking events and follow up accordingly.
To get you started on the right networking path, go to www.espressobrain.com and grab your FREE pdf version of The Little Miracles Book, A Guide to Financial Freedom…100 great networking tips. While you are there, check out the EspressoBrain Works program. Cheers to 2016!! May it be your BEST YEAR EVER!!