Good Business Development Requires Building Your Network by John Dinkel
Last year Gartner, Inc. conducted a study with nearly 500 CEO’s and senior executives from medium to large-sized businesses and concluded that growth remains the top strategic priority. Based on what I’ve been reading recently and in my conversations with CEO’s and business owners, this will continue to be a top priority. The challenge is that many businesses don’t know how to grow. A recent study based in the UK indicated that one in three businesses struggled with how to grow their revenue. I believe it. And one of the most basic principles to growing your revenue is growing your network.
It seems simple right? Well, maybe it’s not as simple as you think. I meet CEO’s and executives all the time that either don’t know how to grow their networks or aren’t disciplined in growing their networks. To be successful, you need to be diligent, strategic, and unrelenting in your pursuit of good partners and centers of influence. It needs to be a part of your weekly regimen of growth. Developing and nurturing your network takes time and skill and it’s something that not everyone has been able to develop in their careers, which is understandable. Each of us comes from a different background and different experiences and many executives have not had the opportunity to practice these skills while making their way to a leadership role. Well, for those of you who haven’t had that opportunity, the time to start is now. And for those of us who have been trained to build our networks, we need to continue to be disciplined in our approach.
The importance of growing your network and developing deep relationships with your partners and strategic alliances can’t be measured. Having a wide network and meaningful relationships will not only help you grow your business, but it will also help you grow your knowledge of how good business development is done. Just like anything else, the more you practice building your network, the better you’ll get and that in turn will lead to personal and professional growth. Think about your current network and your relationships with those people. Are they strong relationships? Do they recommend your services to their colleagues? Do you recommend them? How many strong relationships do you have? Robert T. Kiyosaki had this great quote: “The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work.”
Nurturing your current network is a good start. Make a list of your top 10-20 partners and centers of influence. If you haven’t met with them in a while, take the time to do so. Now, with a virtual environment, it’s much easier to conduct 30-minute “check-in” meetings with your network. In those meetings, make the conversation about them. How can you help them? Who are they trying to meet? If the opportunity arises, educate them on any new services you provide, who you’re trying to meet and anyone in their network you should be meeting with. Remember, make the meeting about them, and always provide value to them whether it’s an introduction, information, an invite to an event or anything else they would see as valuable.
When I think of growing my network, I not only think of my target audience but I also I think of people that have access or are networking with my target audience. In my business, that’s a large group of people. You may have a more targeted market so focus on people that are specific to you. Next, I try to find people like me who are open, willing to partner, have a wide network and genuinely want to help. I always ask my trusted partners who their key partners are to see if they make sense for me. And, of course, I do the same for them. There are several ways to grow your network and perhaps I’ll address those in a future blog. The point is that whether you have a small network or large, you need to be constantly finding ways to grow. Growing your network will grow your business.
