We all do it, networking that is. Whether it’s lurking around in the chat rooms online or attending in person at a local event.

But networking isn’t about ‘working the room’ or joining any online chat that we find amusing. It’s an attempt to find a few high-potential prospects or recommenders so you can develop a relationship.

Author Alan Weiss says there are five key aspects to ‘quality’ networking and these are:

1. Distance power. You’re better off with strangers than you are with those you already know, even if only slightly. Because the latter already have pre-conceived perceptions that colour their judgement. With the former you can immediately create a new perception.
2. Unique Multipliers. These are those people who are not buyers but they do know scores of other people who can help you. A relationship with them can be leveraged into dozens of relationships.
3. Nexus people. These are unique connectors who are insiders with your potential buyers. They can make an immediate introduction, and may be subordinates, assistants, colleagues, family friends, and so on.
4. Adhesion principle. What will you do to be memorable? Alan suggests that you provide the other person with value, thereby creating an obligation. That value may be a business contact or a resource, or you may be a nexus person for them.
5. Contexual connection. You are both at the same network meeting or indeed online chat room, because you have something in common. Make the best of that immediate common bond.

Remember: Your immediate objective in networking is to meet a buyer. However, you don’t want to do a sales pitch or bore people with your wonderful company and how well you are doing.

What you should concentrate on is ‘them’ and giving them value in some way. For instance, if you have given someone a contact to help with their problem, then follow up next time by asking how they got on. Networking is process, not an event and it’s about building quality relationships that will lead to you finding buyers.

Above all else – enjoy the chat!

Article by Wendy Howard, join me on Twitter www.twitter.com/wendyhoward & www.linkedin.com/in/spiritofvenus

If you’ve struggled this year – and yes, it has been a difficult one for all small businesses, maybe you’ve had to make some changes. And some of those changes may have been ones that pushed you to the edge of your comfort zone – the boundary which we feel secure with and when outside of this we begin to feel as though we’re out of control.

Yet it’s something that every adolescent or small business needs to go through to grow. This needs to happen when it reaches a point where there is a need to push beyond the boundaries originally set by the owner.

Your business is limited by how much you can do yourself. Or if you’re managing people it’s limited by how ever many people you can safely manage yourself. The entrepreneur or small business owner’s boundary is limited by the number of others that might be engaged in pursuit of their vision.

Whatever you decide to do you are limiting your business growth if you are the only person who has the ability to control it, touch it, feel it and oversee the work that needs to be done.

Often out of desperation you search for a solution. But when you do this you have a tendency to search for what you already know rather than what you don’t. Therefore you may live in hope that the person you met at the last networking event or someone you recently exchanged business cards with will be the answer to all your prayers.

And often it’s a false hope. It’s not that the person you thought you could do business with hasn’t fulfilled their obligation. Its rather that they are too busy building their own business to manage your business too. Because that’s what’s actually needed – managment of your business.

And the way to grow your business is to look for managers who will take control of some of the aspects that are limiting your growth. Yes, it will challenge you. Yes, it does mean you have to hand over some of the control. Yes, it does mean you’ll have to pay more that you’d probably envisaged. And yes, you will be very uncomfortable for a while.

But it will all come back to you in much greater ways that you ever envisaged. That’s pushing you beyond your comfort zone to a level you’ve never been to before.