Join the Club
More and more businesses are plugging in to the benefits of networking, writes Tony Kaye.
If you're a business owner exploring networking opportunities, the good news is that there's plenty of them to choose from.
On any given day, tens of thousands of Australian business owners are attending various networking events, at breakfast, lunch and cocktails, with the specific aim of broadening both their level of contacts and their number of contracts.
But with some group memberships costing more than $1000 a year, taking into account joining costs and the cost of individual events and meetings, it's important to find networks that will deliver long-term benefits and, ultimately, a good return on investment.
“One of the biggest things I've found is that not a lot of business owners know how to network effectively and are actually wasting their time going to networking events because they have no strategy of attending,” says Ben Angel, founder of Nationwide Networking. “They think they're going to go to one event and get a quick one-off sale, whereas they actually come across as quite pushy.”
Angel says Nationwide Networking is about educating members on how to network with each other. “We focus on making sure they get referrals with each other, but we focus on how to set up a host beneficiary strategy, a cross-promotional strategy, a joint promotion and referral campaign so they can access more of their target market en-masse instead of one by one.”
Networkers need to be clear on their objectives, Angel says. If they don't know what their objectives are in attending then they'll typically get nothing out of it other than education. He says rather than one-off sales, it's ideally about meeting people and forming relationships to access their preferred target market.
Frank Valentic, principal of Advantage Property Consulting in Melbourne , has been a member of Business Network International (BNI), the largest networking organisation in the world, for more than three years. He estimates he is receiving about $100,000 a year in referrals a year –which is a meaningful percentage of total annual revenue.
“It's not only the direct referral business but also the relationships and business contacts that I've made for our business and myself personally – that's another big part of it,” says Valentic.
“Networking is a big part of what I do. I try and do 30 networking appointments a month. We want to make connections, whether they're business partners, mortgage brokers, accountants or individual people we will be able to assist personally or have them recommend us.
“All of my sales people are encouraged to make five or six networking appointments week; we see a huge benefit in that rather than going out and placing big advertisements in the newspapers.”
Small businesses tend to thrive on networking to generate new business, and are continually looking at different ways of broadening their referral bases.
One new networking group tapping into this need in Australia is Oz Child Unite, formed by not-for-profit child welfare agency Oz Child, which runs regular networking events for small businesses with both a business and corporate social responsibility focus. The network is rapidly building its membership across the small business segment.
“Up until this program was developed I couldn't really find a way for small-to-medium businesses to really interact with not-for-profits as opposed to just giving money,” says Oz Child chief executive Tony Pitman. “We provide an avenue for small-to-medium businesses to build a partnership with Oz Child and also to benefit on the business level through networking.”
There are networks to suit just about every business owner. Women's Network Australia , started in 1990 by business entrepreneur Lynette Palmen, has operations in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. WNA runs monthly events in all three cities and produces the quarterly subscription magazine Working Women, which has a readership of 10,000.
Networx Marketers, founded by Kimberly Palmer, focuses on running events for dynamic young professionals and entrepreneurs in marketing and communications, and has a monthly program in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
And Breakthrough Events International, founded by Gary Schuller, provides regular workshops and seminars for members to help them maximise their business potential through education, motivation and by networking with others. All in all, there are literally hundreds of networks, big and small, operating around the country.
Ben Angel says networking is about thinking really creatively to work out different options of accessing your target market at low cost and low risk.
“The relationship starts with the business owner.,” he says “A lot of business owners will wait for someone else to make the move – it's basically a lot like dating in the sense that someone else is always waiting for someone else to make the move and no one makes the move. They need to take the time to find out about the other business owners and what they do, and then look at where they fit in the picture.”