Jeff For Local Marketing explains practical, relationship-based networking tactics to grow a business. He emphasizes scheduling one-to-one meetings (roughly one hour, split into two 30-minute segments for mutual sharing), building referral partnerships across LinkedIn, Facebook, chambers and BNI groups, and preferring BNI because it limits membership to one person per business category, reducing intra-group competition.
So what actions are you taking on a daily basis to.
Grow your business, to work on your business? One of the things that we do in BNI and you don't have to be a B and I member to do this, I do this with LinkedIn, people that I meet, people on Facebook, in other businesses, people in the chamber of commerce. I find people who could be a great referral partner or who may know my referral partner. And I'll do a call of one to one. These are generally about an hour and in that hour.
I will have that person share with me for about a half an hour. You know who they are, what they do, how can I help them grow their business? And then I'll spend a half an hour doing the same thing. Now we both have some invested interest in each other's success. And now when I'm out and about, all of a sudden it's made my hearing different because all of a sudden somebody will say something like I use pest control, something about, hey, what do you do about termites? And all of a sudden I'm like, wow, I just met with this guy named Joe. He has a pest control company and we talked about that. That's what he does. I can now speak with some level of knowledge and authority and suggest Joe's business. That's how that works. So it actually gives me a wider depth of knowledge that I can do things besides just talk about the weather or, or an ache and pain. I can actually say, hey, here's an idea. And this is what his business is. Because it's fresh in my mind and I can tell a story about their business. People like that, it's not just a, it's not just a cold. Well, I got their card at a function and I really didn't meet them, but yeah, they do this, this information. No, that's not a good working on your business. So one to ones joining a, joining a networking group. I like BNI because it's only a, what I call a one category group. There, there's. If you're a real estate agent and you do residential, you're going to be the only one in there. If you're a banker or a mortgage company, you're going to be the only one in there. So you're not competing against each other. I've been in one where they've had multiple seats for that. And it does make a little challenge and sometimes awkward because it puts pressure on a member. Like, you know, I don't know, should I give it to Jeff or should I give it to Joe. It's kind of uncomfortable. So consider bni.
