Lots of men and women in business don’t network in person anymore. Some even consider it a waste of time.
If you’re of that mind, you may have instead opted to stay in the office and get yourself a swish website and sign up to LinkedIn. You may well have cottoned on to the rising importance of social media and created a presence on Twitter, Facebook and relevant internet forums. And to get your name out there, you may be using telemarketing, mailshots or email campaigns. You’re getting ‘out there’ from the comfort of your desk, so why bother taking time out to circulate in person with perfect strangers?
Well, here’s my take on things…
I love online social networking. It has expanded my knowledge base, brought new friends and new business my way, and been instrumental in raising my profile and that of my business. Similarly, I’m all for basing communications with potential and established clients online. It saves time, saves fuel, and it’s good for the environment.
But, I also strongly believe that face-to-face meetings are vital. Perhaps you’re happy to source all of your suppliers via the internet, but lots of buyers want to meet a real person in order to get a sense of who they’ll be dealing with before they part with their hard earned cash or sign on the dotted line.
It’s as simple as this: we buy from people we trust, and sometimes it’s a lot easier to win trust in person over a coffee than when relying on written/telephone communications alone. Not only that, there’s the potential to make a whole different set of creative and social connections in the real world – not everyone is online.
Networking in person works, and I’ve been thinking lately about the best way to communicate that fact and illustrate how best to make it work for you, whatever your personality or business.
Rather than writing a long post extolling the virtues of networking, I’ve asked four people whose opinions I value and respect to supply guest posts for the remainder of this week. Each will look at networking from a slightly different perspective and hopefully make you want to give face-to-face networking a go.
The first post will appear here tomorrow morning, 9am. See you then.
Update
The week of guest posts on real world networking was a great success, thanks to all who contributed and all who shared. Here’s the list in full:
