Edmonton Business Consultant | Business Networking Alone Won’t Work

Book that one on one meeting because that’s going to really accelerate the depth of that relationship and you know, ultimately the ability to, you know, secure any business from that relationship.

Yeah, I can see why with the two. I can be you ever cause it’s not,

hi, thanks for joining us for another episode of ask spurl CPA today as the Edmonton business coach, we’re talking about how business networking alone won’t work. So again, as the having a business coach, we’re talking about how business networking alone won’t work. Hi Michael here with me again. Michael, how was your first week of, of, of putting up content? It’s pretty good. Uh, I’m learning a lot. Yeah. Yeah, you get a lot of words down for the Google bots. Okay. So, uh, the quote that we have here today, so Michael Gerber quote, we know author of our favorite e-myth and he says people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know, but because of their insatiable need to know more. And the statistic that we have here, if 50% of all Canadian businesses will go out of business in the first five years and 42% of these failed business owners were listed, the inability to get enough customers as one of the primary reasons for the failure making, the inability to attract enough customers as the most common reason for business failure.

And the story that we have here is we find business owners and they think that they can build a scalable business with networking alone. So Michael, what are the questions that these business owners should be asking? This business network can help you build raving fans. You can’t sow business network. This isn’t the a salon slash on business networking. This isn’t, you know, uh, an opportunity to show its limits. But the business networking could 100% help you build raving fans. Cause these are who you’re meeting with other business owners and they’re trying to grow their business too. And there can be that momentum, that optimism that’s around and you attract those people as customers and you get to see them, uh, more times than you would your regular customer. You can build a stronger, a deeper relationship. Those are the type of raving fans they’ll, you know, those are the people who are going to give reviews, you know, who are going to send a referral.

It can 100% be an excellent way to help you build, you know, help you attract those raving fans. Why should you look for a networking group that has set recurring meeting times? So the, I think there’s a, there’s a lot of times for a set recurring meeting times and I’ve really set recurring meeting times for almost anything in life is a, is probably a good thing. But let’s, let’s walk through it on a business networking, uh, event. If you have one that has set recurring meeting times, that means you’re not going to be wasting a whole bunch of time going back and, and trying to book a new time, uh, each and every week or month or quarter or whenever it is that, that these people, uh, you know, are going to meet. Edmonton Business Consultant, the, the other thing that’s going to happen is if you have these set recurring meetings, has people are gonna start to show up.

You’re going to see those people over and over again, and we just talked about it before. How, you know, business networking is an excellent way to build those raving fans who attract those raving fans. But if it’s not a set recurring time, if you don’t see these people over and over again, you’re not going to get those raving fans. Edmonton Business Consultant, so I, you know, and, and also how are you going to fit it into your schedule? Uh, if it’s at a different time every week, it might not work out. So, so if you, you know, networking to get those raving fans, it’s a great idea. But look for one of those groups that has set recurring times that happen over and over again that you can fit into your calendar easy and you know who you’re going to be meeting with the same people over and over again.

So you can build that deeper, stronger relationship with them. Why should you also meet one on one with people you meet at networking events? Yeah. So you know, sometimes people will think, well I went to the networking events, I saw them, I got their card. It’s very, it’s very difficult to build, you know, ask those tougher questions, those more in depth questions to really get to know someone in terms of a group setting. So if you meet someone that you think is a, a, a Edmonton Business Consultant, a good potential customer or maybe you want to do business with them or maybe they just know people that you want to do business with, I would recommend that one on one meeting time afterwards. That’s really good to accelerate the relationship. Don’t just wait for the next, you know, week or month. The next time that networking event happens, book that one-on-one meeting.

Cause that’s going to really accelerate the depth of that relationship and you know, ultimately the ability to, you know, security business from that relationship. How does having multiple advertising initiatives help you compare effectiveness? So, you know, we locked in, well networking is one advertising initiative. It’s only one. Edmonton Business Consultant, but if you only have one advertising initiative, you don’t really know if it’s effective or not. You know, you know, you can catch it maybe how much business you’re getting from it, but you don’t know if that’s, you know, uh, an excellent performance or you know, a below average performance. Edmonton Business Consultant, so if you have multiple marketing initiatives, you compare them. This one gets me so much business per hour and per dollar and this one gets me this much per hour and per dollar cause they all, every advertising initiative that you have is going to be a factor of, it’s going to cost you money usually and it’s going to cost you time. Um, and so you’re starting to look, you know, if I invest this much time and this much money into this initiative, how much is it going to pay me back? Um, but if you only have one, you’ve really never know if you’re participating in an effective, you know, marketing initiative.

Um, okay.

Why is the number 168 the most limiting factor in any business? So ultimately most businesses are going to come back to time. You know, that business owners time 168, we all have 168 hours in the week. Edmonton Business Consultant, it doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to bootstrap this business and you’ve got no money in the account or you’ve got $1 million in the account to start this business, you’re going to be living in by that 168 hours in a week. So when we’re thinking about marketing initiatives, again, it’s not just the amount of money you’re spending on that marketing initiative. We might, people might find, oh, this is a free networking event. The ROI is infinity because of I icon. If I generated anything, it didn’t cost me anything. Well, no, it costs you time. It costs you valuable time out of your calendar that you could be used for something else. So 168 hours is always the most limiting.

It’s business networking at time efficient marketing initiative. In terms of other marketing initiative, a lot of times it’ll be less time efficient than a lot of other marketing initiatives. Let’s compare it to launching an ad. You want to launch a Google ad, it’s going to take you some time to launch that Google ad and get the copy that just the way you want it and pick out all the keywords that you want to target. And then posts. You don’t get the account going, set it up online, login, monitor the ad. That takes time too. But not as much time as market. You know, your own, you go to a marketing event and there’s, you know, 20, 50 a hundred people in the room. Edmonton Business Consultant, but you can, that’s going to take you an hour or two hours, three hours of your time. Whereas opposed you could launch an ad and it might take you, you know, an hour a month to monitor the account. Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, and optimize the account. But you could be reaching tens of thousands of people. Now mind you, you’re going to have to put some more money behind that to reach those numbers. But in terms of a, you know, a time efficiency, um, you know, I would say marketing at network marketing ranks on the lower end of the time efficiency scale,

is there a limit to the amount of networking you can do? 100%. If we always go to that 168 hours, there’s only, you know, so many times you can go, there’s only so many golf events you contend or chamber events that you can tend ultimately time is the biggest limiting factor. Edmonton Business Consultant, so it tends not to be the most scalable one, although it’s really, really effective for attracting those raving fans. It might not be the most scalable, the most time efficient. And there’s certainly an upper limit. You’re never going to grow beyond a certain point if all of your marketing is network marketing, especially network marketing done by yourself, uh, because you can only meet so many people had to hand diminishing returns from networking beyond a certain point. I believe. So. I think, I mean, you can meet with those people. Let’s say you meet with people every week and maybe you have a one on one meeting with them all the time.

Would it increase the efficiency to meet with the uh, know, uh, twice a week? Um, you want to have a one on one meeting with them once a year that the people in your networking group, would it increase the efficiency if you met with them 10 times a year, 20 times a year? Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, I believe there’s a diminishing law of return from that. Uh, will ultimately, you know, we have to recognize we only have 168 hours in the week, so anytime we put into network marketing, we’re taking away from something else. Um, so I, I think networking to a point, it’s really good to help me build those raving fans. But in, in my view, it, you know, you have to find her that point is because after that point, in any business it’d be different for different businesses, but it has a diminishing a law of returns is running paid ads generally more scalable than networking?

It is. Yeah. So if you find, uh, a paid ad that works and the numbers behind that paid at work, so for every dollar you put into it, you’re getting enough back in return that you can generate a profit margin to in order to cover that at a, you know, assuming you have a enough people to execute the, the work, you can keep running that ad in perpetuity, you can run it, you know, over over a bigger area. You can run it more often. You can put more money into it. Uh, it’s really just a click. You really just, you know, adjusting the settings in the ad. Whereas, you know, if you want to do more marketing, you have a block up more time in your calendar. So generally paid as there are a little more scalable than a networking. Will. Other marketing initiatives like paid ads help convert networking leads?

Yeah. Yeah. And here, here’s a part that this is lost on people. A lot of times they say, well I can network a referrals alone. Well, you know the, the problem is if you want to network referral, let’s go back to, we always talk about Google, Google reviews. 88% of all customers will look at Google reviews before they decide to purchase from you or not. Um, so if you get a referral or a lead from network marketing, but you have no Google reviews, you’re less likely to convert that networking review because 88% of even those networking leads, they will, they will check you out on Google as well as you know, let’s look at the ads. A lot of people are going to have to, you know, see about your, or hear about your offering on an average of the average, let’s say is 4.3 times.

So let’s say someone comes in and does a one on one meeting with you or you meet him at an event and they check out your website. You know, if I have a retargeting ad, it’s going to retarget that person over and over and over again. Now they’re not just seeing me every time I show up at the networking event, they’re seeing me every time they, they open their internet browser and you just get that top of mind awareness to it and it helps you stand out from the crowd and it helps you actually execute on those leads that are coming from a network marketing initiatives. So, you know, even if you believe in network marketing, you know, it’s, it’s almost more reasons that you should have other marketing initiatives. So a, you have those other marketing initiatives to know which one is the most efficient and B, you know, a lot of times it’s not just any one of those initiatives that converts a customer.

It’s multiple of those initiatives. You met them at a networking event, they saw your Google reviews, they gave him your website, they got retargeted by a retargeting ad. You saw him again at the next network meeting. Now you’re a top of mind. Now they’re ready to do business with you. That’s the type of workflow that actually happens. So, uh, even if you are doing network marketing, I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that you have to have other marketing initiatives running as well. So that’s what we have here today. Thanks so much for joining us. As always, please hit the like and subscribe button. So we continue to deliver you tips on how to beat the odds at business. And feel free to leave some comments below so we can respond back and use your input for future future videos. Thanks very much.