INNER Circle's Trevor Nel On SEDA Website

Found this article link on http://www.seda.org.za/ :

Network effectively to secure clients

BUSINESS consultants often rely on service providers and word of mouth to market their services, but joining a networking forum, especially one that counts hundreds of business owners as its members, may be an effective way to bring in new business.
But attending a networking session can often leave you with little else than idle chit-chat and a few business cards from business owners you never talked to. The solution is to approach networking forums with the right frame of mind.

Trevor Nel (pictured here), a business consultant who runs networking forum INNER Circle, says many networking sessions are wasted because business owners treat them as social occasions rather than ways to grow profit by linking up with others.

He says many business owners believe they are networking if they hand out as many business cards as they can.

But he believes it’s more important to make face-to-face contact with three people than to hand out 30 business cards.

In many cases, business cards are only used to create a database with which to spam people which is not a very affective way to make new clients, he says.

More of Nel’s key networking tips are:

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  Listen to other people and try to discover why they have attended the networking session. Ask yourself whether there is anything they can offer you or you can offer them. In this way, even introverted business owners can benefit if they are good listeners, he says.

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  Establish one-on-one contacts with some of those attending the networking session. Then take them aside and listen to them more intensely or arrange for a face-to-face meeting later.

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  Business owners should be honest about why they are there and what value they can add to the business or organisation of the person they are meeting with. There are only three reasons why a business consultant would conduct networking: to buy something, to sell something or to get more information on something. Nel says it’s better to hear a “no” from someone in the first five minutes than to go through months of to’ing and fro’ing without anything materialising.

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  Present another business owner with something that will demonstrate that you are interested in what they had to say. For example, an article or website link.

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  Don’t discount people because they may not appear to offer your business anything. Nel says business owners should ask others attending networking sessions enough questions because everyone has contacts that you can use.
  

Nel says networking sessions should be conducted among small groups of not more than 20 to 30 people. Anything more, he says, and you’ll get a crowd. Presently, Innercircle has 6 000 members most of whom are small business owners.