What Is Networking?
The literal translation of Networking would be “work your network of contacts.”
Well-applied Networking will help us increase our business volume thanks to increased profitable contacts following a business strategy or a marketing plan and generating awareness of our company.
In short, the main basis of Networking is to build relationships with people in your professional environment who want to do business with you or with whom you can do it in the future in one way or another.
It’s a form of personal selling. You have to make yourself known, what you are a professional at, and the advantages of your company so that your contacts ask you for more information and gain their trust. Networking is also based on generating awareness, making yourself known, and being a good reference for your contacts to recommend you to other people.
It is a tool that is gaining more and more weight in companies and, above all, giving greater value to those professionals who have a good network of contacts and know how to move to generate more business for the companies in which they work.
The Origin Of Networking
The most basic Networking has always existed; the human being is a “social animal”; it arises in the groups that have been formed since childhood, school, university, and our first job; surely you have several of these networks today and Have you taken advantage of any of them at some point?
At a professional level, agreements have always been closed over coffee, at working lunches, fairs, and conferences, and there has also always been associationism of professional groups or in the same chambers of commerce, some of them already having more than 100 years of existence.
What Is It Going To Do For Us?
The Networking that we do will pursue different purposes depending on our position in the company in which we work, which may be specifically:
1. Strengthen the relationship with our current customers.
2. Get to know our current customers better and in a more relaxed environment.
3. Publicize our company or business idea.
4. Make us known with the idea of professional development.
5. Publicize new products or services of our company.
6. Detect business opportunities.
7. Meet potential customers or business partners.
8. Reach high-level people, difficult to access, “decision makers.”
9. Sell, sell, and sell.
Organization Of The Networker’s Agenda
First, you must be clear about what you offer personally and for your company. Define your target, your target audience. Make a list of all those clients that you would like to reach out to do business with them, look for those organizations that can give you contacts, and participate in those groups that are related to you and in which you can find your target audience.
Once you have it clear, investigate through the Internet, specialized press, and your contacts all those events of your interest.
Also:
• Subscribe to all the newsletters that touch on topics of interest to you; it is better to have an excess of information than a lack of information.
• Read and participate in blogs that also have to do with your interests.
• Search for virtual communities, discussion forums, or newsgroups of interest.
• Visit the main pages of the chambers of commerce; from my experience, one of the most active, they have an infinite number of activities that are not exclusive to their members.
• Recommend events to your acquaintances and say they also count on you to inform them of those who may interest you.
• Create your events and inform all your contacts about them; make them visible, especially on the web.
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