5 Tips For Creating Your 2017 Networking Strategy

Firestorm · Jan 2, 2017

Happy New Year and welcome to 2017!! I hope you are every bit as excited as I am to attack this new year! I’ve got some big goals, both for my business, Firestorm®, and for myself personally. I’m sure you have some awesome goals as well and if you are reading this, I’m guessing one of them has something to do with building or growing your network. So let’s dive in!

1)   Identify who your target client is. Be extremely specific. How much does your client do in revenue? How many employees do they have? How long have they been in business? What industry are they in? Do you have a target geographic location? Do your clients need to have an office of a particular size? Make a persona for your ideal client and keep track of this.

2)   Who is your prospect w/in that company? Do you work with the owner? The CEO? The CFO? Figure out who exactly is your decision maker and write this down.

3)   Make a list of complimentary services to your own. What other types of products and services is your prospect buying that will involve your product or service in any way, shape or form? For instance, if you do I.T. Security, what other conversations will include I.T. Security or at least need to have I.T. Security as a consideration? It would probably come up if they are considering a new software product. It may also come up if they are considering moving their data from servers they own to the cloud. Or perhaps it would come up if they are looking at a new website. Make a list of all the products and services where your business may be a consideration.

4)   Find those vendors. Now that you have identified other vendors with whom you share common clients, now your task is to identify the people involved in selling those products and services. In the previous example, if you know that a cloud storage service will include a conversation about I.T. Security then figure out who is selling the cloud services. You can do this by searching LinkedIn or asking your friends and business colleagues. Make a list of the people involved. Keep this list up to date and share it with people you know. These are going to be great partners for you in building your business.

5)   Build a relationship with those people. These are people you need to be in regular contact with. Take them out for coffee, lunch or beers. Invite them to go golfing or hang out at sporting events. Invite them to join a relationship building group with you.

And there you have it. Identify who you share clients with or who you COULD share clients with and set about meeting those people and building a relationship with them. If you’d like more detail on going about this, check out our YouTube Channel and join us at a Firestorm® event! We’d love to meet you! 

Share:

JOIN OUR 2023 NETWORKING CHALLENGE FOR FREE!

About Us

We are a high quality B2B networking organization dedicated to helping you identify your ideal strategic partners and facilitate the relationship building process.