Do you have goals for your business? Do you have marketing goals and sales goals? We all know that goals are important. The question is, how well do we apply that knowledge? If you don’t have any networking goals, you are, unfortunately, in the majority. Obviously you believe in the power of networking, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog. Why, then, would you wait to write networking goals for your business? Networking seems to be one of those things that many people do as a reaction to no or slow busin...

It’s not called “net-sit” or “net-eat,” it’s called NetWORK! Effective networking is all about learning how to work your network effectively and appropriately. I also believe that there are times to “notwork.” As a matter of fact, I’m fairly confident that when I’m 70 years old, I won’t say, “Gee, I wish I spent more time at the office.” I believe that we entrepreneurs, business professionals and salespeople need to make sure to take time t...

We recently surveyed more than 3,000 people at BNI.com. We asked the participants what percentage of their business comes from word-of-mouth or referrals. We found that fewer than 5 percent got no business from referrals, and more than half of the respondents said they got more than 70 percent of their business from word-of-mouth or referrals! Look at this and another nine surveys on networking at this LINK. Does this measure up to your experience? I would really like to hear from you as to whether you agree with the...

Last Saturday night, my family and I decided to go out to dinner and ended up eating at a brand-new restaurant in the town where we live. We hadn’t actually heard anything about the restaurant and didn’t even know it existed, but it caught our attention as we drove down the street and we decided to try it out. The food was exceptional and I was quite impressed with the service and the ambience, yet there were hardly any other patrons besides us in the entire place. As we finished our dinner, the owner of ...

After a recent speaking engagement I did, a woman appoached me and asked my advice on the dilemma of getting qualified referrals for a “difficult to refer” business. She was passing as many referrals as she could to others, but because her business seemed to revolve around such a niche market, the business referrals she was receiving were slim to none, and she was starting to get discouraged. I referred her to an article I wrote a few years back that addresses this exact predicament; and since I’m s...

Where does your business come from? In a survey of roughly 4,000 people at the BNI.com website, roughly 73 percent of the respondents said that they get most of their business from networking and referral activities. Only 12 percent get most of their business from advertising and less than 10 percent get most of their business from cold calling! What I find amazing about this is that most colleges still focus on courses on advertising, and most big companies still train their new salespeople how to cold call! Despite...

I wanted to let everyone know about a great online resource called YourBusinessChannel.com that I recently started working with. Since the beginning of this year I have recorded seven online TV shows discussing networking tips for YourBusinessChannel.com, and I am impressed with the fact that the site offers free access to viewers everywhere and broadcasts shows based on viewer feedback. I’m constantly encouraging people to respond to my own blogs and podcasts because it lets me know what kind of information pe...