Three Reasons To Try Business Networking

Three Reasons To Try Business NetworkingWho doesn’t love a great list? Well here is our top reasons you should invest time and effort into business networking.

1. Confidence in yourself, and your business.

Taking the time to speak about yourself and your business is a great benefit. Most people have heard of the elevator pitch. This is where you have a very short amount of time to succinctly tell someone about you and your business. The Akcela elevator pitch is really simple, but it has proven to be effective.

“We support businesses to unlock their full potential. Achieving higher efficiency, greater customer satisfaction, employee retention, revenue and profitability.”

Of course that is easy to write, but it takes time to hone in front of an audience, doing so in front of other businesses in a professional environment can really support by giving you confidence in yourself, and your business.

2. Understanding market conditions local to you.

Want to know how the market is within your local community, what better than to ask other business owners. Whether you are in a B2B sphere, or B2C, how are non-competitive businesses performing currently? Is there something really working for them you can use?

3. Gain a different perspective.

Remembering that business networking is a mutually beneficial pursuit, it’s a great opportunity to discuss a business based issue that you are experiencing, perhaps someone has a different perspective than you. Perhaps they may also have the answer. Taking the time to understand other businesses situations can be readily applied to your own business.

Making the most of Networking Opportunities

Making the most of networking opportunities is something that is learnt with time, and this is something that come with practice. There are, of course, a few pieces of advice to enhance your opportunities to begin with.

1. Networking is an investment of your time, utilise it.

Networking is an investment, the time you spend investing in building a business network creates an opportunity cost for other endeavours you could have been pursuing. It is important that you make the maximum of this time. It may be a struggle, but set yourself a goal of how many contacts to speak with.  Of course, be aware of making the interactions natural, engaging and beneficial.

2. It’s business networking, but be yourself.

Of course business networking is about making business contacts and mutually beneficial contacts, but you are still interacting with people. Be yourself. It isn’t a constant sales pitch, it is a personal interaction. In this environment business will naturally come up, you don’t need to force it.

3. Cultivate and leverage your network.

I wrote an article about leveraging your alumni network for the Norwich Business School, and I believe business networking is no different. The key takeaways for me are this:

• You get out what you put in, be a valuable member of your network, don’t focus on what you can gain, focus on what you can offer.
• Take time to continue to build those interactions, in a natural way.
• Be willing to ask for advice.

Business Networking Through COVID-19

Due to the great work done by most of the above mentioned operators, business networking in Norwich, Norfolk has continued. The chamber of commerce has many great networking events conducted on Zoom, many of them being offered for free. One suggestion, if you are new to networking digitally, is to review our guide on improving business communication. It is very worthwhile, especially when using new communication channels.