Have you been to a networking Chamber of Commerce Mixer, Leads Club or other Business Social Event and watched how some people run off with the mouth with tall tales, stories and go on and on about nothing.

Eventually they start talking about something or someone you know a whole lot about and you find that they are the biggest Bull Slinger you have ever seen? In fact this happens a lot at such parties and business get togethers and you can indeed learn something from all this; don’t do it.

You see the fact is a good networker watches their mouth and does not overly try to impress anyone. It is much more likely that they will impress someone by showing a genuine interest in what the other person has to say. It might also be relevant to avoid bull slingers because if they are busy BS’ing everyone how can you believe anything that they say is true?

Play it safe and listen a lot, know a lot and say little. It is best for all concerned and it is much easier to win friends and influence people the old fashion way by earning their respect instead of giving them a BS song and dance. I sincerely hope you understand this and practice these theories of social business networking at a time and place of your choosing ASAP.

Have you ever considered that when you are networking you are also often giving away information? Information which maybe proprietary in nature to your company? If you have not considered this you should, as this is the biggest Tiger Trap of networking and one you need to be careful of.

What you say can and will be used against you in the market place. Remember competition can be indeed very tough at times and lose lips sink ships. Does this mean you need an alternative strategy? No, just to be careful what you say. In fact perhaps you might recall that thing your Grandparents use to say; You have two ears and one mouth, so use them in that ratio?

I can tell you over the years the things I had heard in casual conversations about my competitors had indeed made me quite a bit of money. You see, too often someone would tell me something about a competitor or someone they knew in my line of work at a networking party.

The latest buzzword is "relationship networking". The gurus predict that if you don't incorporate the principles of relationship networking into your business, you'll never survive. So what is relationship networking and why is it crucial in cultivating your business?

Relationships are a basic human need. Relationship networking is about connecting with people and benefiting from those relationships. It's about creating leverage.

The term "leverage" refers to the principle of using a strategic advantage to gain a larger benefit. Leverage is connected to the word force, such as in the number of people in a group or organization, or a "force to be reckoned with".

Imagine a water lily floating on a pond.[1] This fragrant beauty is actually a floating-leaved aquatic perennial herb. The leaves are attached to flexible underwater stalks rising from thick fleshy rhizomes. Its roots are submerged in mucky water up to seven feet deep. Each spring, new shoots grow up through the water until they reach the surface.

Water lilies can be increased by sowing seeds. The key elements to successfully cultivating lilies from seeds are patience, proper drainage, disease and weed control, and protection against creatures and insects that may destroy the pod.

Cultivating a network of people is similar to cultivating a water lily pod. In order for human beings to thrive, they require an environment that will nurture their minds, ignite their passion, and eliminate elements that are destructive to their well-being.

In order to successfully cultivate hardy water lilies, one needs to have patience. Before planting the seeds, it's imperative to understand the germination requirements and any special treatments needed to grow them. A common mistake many gardeners make is germinating too many seeds at one time. While it's always a good idea to germinate a few more seeds than necessary, too many seeds can create an overgrowth which can become unmanageable. The same holds true for people.

When Claude Monet[2] created his series of forty-eight water lily paintings, he probably wasn't thinking about leverage. When photographer, Walter Paul Bebirian[3] captured the essence of water lilies through the eye of his camera, he probably wasn't thinking about leverage either. However, both of these artists created a considerable amount of leverage based on their reputation and the quality of their work.

Monet and Bebirian developed strong relationships and people take action on their behalf. This is leverage. The more people you can reach and the more relationships you can build, the more leverage you will create.

Every opportunity you have to meet new people is an opportunity to create leverage.

If you are willing to invest time and patience in the relationship networking process, the payoff can be immeasurable. Expecting instant success in relationship networking is unrealistic. However, you can plan your networking opportunities to shorten the amount of time it takes to build those relationships.

The first step in relationship networking is to determine what you want and need to accomplish. If you want to develop long-term relationships or become involved with your community, join local civic organizations. These include the Chamber of Commerce, business associations, trade groups and non-profit organizations.

Another way to get "up close and personal" is to volunteer your time and talent to a cause. People prefer to do business with those who have similar interests and values. The saying of "If you want to catch fish, go to where the fish are" applies here. Focus your efforts on how and where you meet the people who can help you accomplish your goals. Placing yourself in situations where a group of like-minded people are gathering, will help you quickly grow your network community.

Participating in social and business forums can help you create leverage. Make a point of providing beneficial information to the group and creating meaningful conversations. This will expose your talents, solidify your reputation, and connect you to countless others - all for the same amount of work.

Leverage your forum posts and use the topic to start another discussion in a different group. Post the topic on your blog or website and include it in your newsletter. Leverage the topic even further by expanding it into an article, autoresponder course, or ebook.

Strategic alliances are another popular method of relationship networking. Let's say you own a donut shop and one of your network members works for a local radio station. You could provide donuts to the radio staff and offer a "giveaway" to their listeners. This creates a win-win situation. For the cost of a few boxes of donuts, you could obtain free airtime and build a rock solid reputation, while providing value to the radio show listeners.

Relationship networking involves two types of skills. First, you have to listen as much as you talk. When you actively listen, you discover needs, interests, and things you have in common. This lays the foundation for a productive and long-lasting relationship.

Second, you must nurture the relationship. Just as it is unrealistic to expect water lilies to grow and produce pods without creating the proper environment, you cannot expect your relationships to thrive without nurturing them.

Do you know someone with a passion to write and a yearning to be successful, but not exactly overflowing with cash?

Do you have a friend with a fledgling writing business that needs publicity, a writer with articles to be published, but a name still to be made in the industry?

Here's your chance to help that someone out. You may not be able to promise them publishing contracts, or shower them with money to have them write your memoirs, but you can assist in getting their marketing train out of the station. Whether your contacts are business or personal they are all contacts and part of an extended, often global, network of people your writer friend would otherwise not be able to reach.

1. If your writer friend/aquaintance is doing the rounds of the free web-content sites in order to build a name for themselves and fatten their portfolio, do them a favour and click/comment/rate their articles. Some websites pay [admittedly small amounts] each time a writer's article is viewed, others offer no money but do provide the chance to get more articles out and used with the author's bio attached.

2. Add your friend's name and webpage url to your e-mail signature

3. Interact at their blogs

4. Pass on names/business cards to anyone you hear of that may need a writer

5. Post adverts on your company's electronic bulletin board

6. E-mail details of their writing services to all of your friends and ask them to pass on/click/recommend/publicise wherever they can

These are all simple, easy things to do that won't cost you more than a few minutes at a time, but could be the link between your struggling friend and the next level up in their writing business. For new starters in any industry, the costs of publicity can be enormous making word-of-mouth networking a valuable tool. For writers, who often start out as extremely part-time - bashing away at computers after everyone else has gone to bed or up before the dawn to get a head-start - and very much alone, the boost a friend can make to their efforts will be greatly appreciated.

You might even get a free coffee out of it!

For writers who have dutifully read all the above mentally making lists on which friends they can second into their personal publicity department, you too can follow this advice. Set aside time for "Save a starving author day" and start writing e-mails. Make as many past acquaintances as possible new friends with a catchy e-mail. Remind them who you are, provide a few friendly details on what you're doing and enlist them into your hunt for work. Just keep the promises of coffee to your closest circle of friends or you might end up spending more time at the café than at your computer.

The latest buzzword is "relationship networking". The gurus predict that if you don't incorporate the principles of relationship networking into your business, you'll never survive. So what is relationship networking and why is it crucial in cultivating your business?

Relationships are a basic human need. Relationship networking is about connecting with people and benefiting from those relationships. It's about creating leverage.

The term "leverage" refers to the principle of using a strategic advantage to gain a larger benefit. Leverage is connected to the word force, such as in the number of people in a group or organization, or a "force to be reckoned with".

Imagine a water lily floating on a pond.[1] This fragrant beauty is actually a floating-leaved aquatic perennial herb. The leaves are attached to flexible underwater stalks rising from thick fleshy rhizomes. Its roots are submerged in mucky water up to seven feet deep. Each spring, new shoots grow up through the water until they reach the surface.

Water lilies can be increased by sowing seeds. The key elements to successfully cultivating lilies from seeds are patience, proper drainage, disease and weed control, and protection against creatures and insects that may destroy the pod.

Cultivating a network of people is similar to cultivating a water lily pod. In order for human beings to thrive, they require an environment that will nurture their minds, ignite their passion, and eliminate elements that are destructive to their well-being.

In order to successfully cultivate hardy water lilies, one needs to have patience. Before planting the seeds, it's imperative to understand the germination requirements and any special treatments needed to grow them. A common mistake many gardeners make is germinating too many seeds at one time. While it's always a good idea to germinate a few more seeds than necessary, too many seeds can create an overgrowth which can become unmanageable. The same holds true for people.

When Claude Monet[2] created his series of forty-eight water lily paintings, he probably wasn't thinking about leverage. When photographer, Walter Paul Bebirian[3] captured the essence of water lilies through the eye of his camera, he probably wasn't thinking about leverage either. However, both of these artists created a considerable amount of leverage based on their reputation and the quality of their work.

Monet and Bebirian developed strong relationships and people take action on their behalf. This is leverage. The more people you can reach and the more relationships you can build, the more leverage you will create.

Every opportunity you have to meet new people is an opportunity to create leverage.

If you are willing to invest time and patience in the relationship networking process, the payoff can be immeasurable. Expecting instant success in relationship networking is unrealistic. However, you can plan your networking opportunities to shorten the amount of time it takes to build those relationships.

The first step in relationship networking is to determine what you want and need to accomplish. If you want to develop long-term relationships or become involved with your community, join local civic organizations. These include the Chamber of Commerce, business associations, trade groups and non-profit organizations.

Another way to get "up close and personal" is to volunteer your time and talent to a cause. People prefer to do business with those who have similar interests and values. The saying of "If you want to catch fish, go to where the fish are" applies here. Focus your efforts on how and where you meet the people who can help you accomplish your goals. Placing yourself in situations where a group of like-minded people are gathering, will help you quickly grow your network community.

Participating in social and business forums can help you create leverage. Make a point of providing beneficial information to the group and creating meaningful conversations. This will expose your talents, solidify your reputation, and connect you to countless others - all for the same amount of work.

Leverage your forum posts and use the topic to start another discussion in a different group. Post the topic on your blog or website and include it in your newsletter. Leverage the topic even further by expanding it into an article, autoresponder course, or ebook.

Strategic alliances are another popular method of relationship networking. Let's say you own a donut shop and one of your network members works for a local radio station. You could provide donuts to the radio staff and offer a "giveaway" to their listeners. This creates a win-win situation. For the cost of a few boxes of donuts, you could obtain free airtime and build a rock solid reputation, while providing value to the radio show listeners.

Relationship networking involves two types of skills. First, you have to listen as much as you talk. When you actively listen, you discover needs, interests, and things you have in common. This lays the foundation for a productive and long-lasting relationship.

Second, you must nurture the relationship. Just as it is unrealistic to expect water lilies to grow and produce pods without creating the proper environment, you cannot expect your relationships to thrive without nurturing them.

Business coaching services basically provide companies with advice and guidance on improving their companies and making them more successful. Running a business may be difficult and draining, especially for new business owners. Having the ability to call on someone for help may be valuable enough to many business owners and managers to pay for the convenience.

The First Steps

If you are serious about getting into business coaching services, you should research the market in your area. Check the phone book and internet to see what services are already being offered. You want to be careful not to flood the market with a service which can not be supported by the clientele available. You can also ask professionals you know for guidance and suggestions.

Another valuable source of information is small business organizations in your area. There are private organizations as well as branches from the Small Business Administration (SBA) readily accessible across the country. Check to see what is available in your area and utilize what services are available. There is no reason to do unnecessary work if it has already been done by another entity.

Business cards

Once you have decided to go into the business coaching business you should design business cards and letterhead for your company. You may do this yourself and print them at home, you can hire someone to design them, or you may wish to utilize a printing company. In the beginning, you probably want to avoid unnecessary expenditures if possible. The important thing is to have professional cards you can hand out with confidence. There are also websites on the internet that provide free business cards in order to earn your loyalty; this may be a good option for you, especially in the beginning.

Website

You may also consider setting up a website for your business coaching business. If you can design it yourself, this is a fairly inexpensive form of advertisement that can be very impressive if done properly. There are various hosting sites and domain registrars; simply look on the internet to see what you can utilize. Some hosting sites are very expensive, while others charge less than $5.00 a month. There are also various programs you can use to design your site. You may buy special software, utilize the software offered by some hosting sites, or simply use Word to create your website. The important thing is to put something together that looks professional and draws business to you.

Clients

Once you have business cards and a website, you should start trying to recruit clients. You should have a professional image with all of the work you have already put forth. You can utilize contacts you already have or start by approaching companies that may need business coaching services. The important thing is to get started. Many people will do the preliminary work only to freeze up when it comes time to actually start working. Get out, meet people and tell them what you have to offer - after that growing your business should be easy.

Your Package--your face to the customer--is an asset much more valuable than most small business owners realize. For many companies, a promotions archive is a vital but untapped resource to aid in crafting profitable marketing campaigns.

Don’t let your promotions become buried treasure. Often our best creative breakthroughs get lost in the hustle-bustle of getting out an ad campaign, creating the next weekly ad for the newspaper, or penning the copy for a newsletter. We small business marketers are busy people. But here is a way for you to put some creative marketing “money” in the bank.

Build a Promotion Idea Vault. It’s easy, it’s fast, it’s cheap and it’s useful! Does it sound too good to be true? All that you need to do is to collect samples of your old ads, flyers, newsletters, coupons and email campaigns and store them in your Promotion Idea Vault.

Do you have a marquee out front that you create a new slogan for each week? Take a digital photo and then print it out. Are you planning on changing your website? Great—just make sure you archive hard copies of your current pages.

Why? Because if you just stack all these marketing gems in a corner filing cabinet they will become buried treasure…

…and you or your successor will have to initiate a scavenger hunt to find these old brilliant--or at least adequate--thoughts you once had.

Don’t let this happen to you. The key is to build in one quick step each time you create your marketing material and save a completed, printed copy. Here’s an easy way to remember what to do:

* Insert
* Label
* Save

You’ll need a three-ring binder, about 30 clear sleeves, and a couple of sheets of 1 ½” labels. Sizes on all these materials are our suggestions; use what fits your promotions volume. Write or type the following on each label:

* Date
* Quantity produced (if applicable)
* Contents
* Media
* Audience

Then, slide in your sample piece and stick the label on the clear sleeve. You’ve just saved a piece of your mind for later and saved yourself hours of time on some future promotion.

One next-to-last note: a digital or hard-copy backup of your vault is a must. Even if all you do is toss an extra copy of every brochure or sales letter or print ad in an old shoebox and store it offsite, at lest you’ll have backup in case catastrophe strikes your small business.

And a final note: building a Brand, grooming People, crafting and delivering a Package that reflects your Brand--all these take consistency and discipline. Incorporate this same disciplined consistency into archiving your marketing efforts (and failures!) and your small business will succeed where your competitors fail.

Remember Features and Benefits? Sure; that’s Sales 101, right? Features describe a product or service, Benefits describe what that product or service does for the customer. These are pretty basic concepts, but sometimes a small business marketer needs to borrow these time-tested sales techniques to help build a Brand Banner or to dredge up a clever marketing promotion or ad campaign.

Stickiness is an idea described by Gladwell in The Tipping Point. For our marketing purposes, stickiness is how well your marketing message is remembered by--sticks with--your customers and prospects. Stickiness can be achieved by a catchy phrase or a clever marketing gimmick or some type of giveaway or a clever slogan. The idea is to get customers to remember your business; to make it stick with them inside their mind.

The following is a simple exercise designed to help you with building your next promotion or clarifying your brand. Set aside, say, fifteen minutes and just look at your company’s strengths. For now, please forget about your company compared to the competition. This isn’t a discovery exercise in figuring out where your company is positioned in the market. To start with, simply list features and benefits of your primary products or services. Remember, a feature is a function, the “what it does” of a product or service. A benefit is a “what is does for the customer”. There is a world of difference between the two. We suggest you build a simple table on your computer, or you can even rough it out on a piece of notebook paper. Construct four columns, with the following column headings:

* Feature
* Benefit
* One or two Words that Sum Up Benefit
* How to make it Sticky

Underneath the four columns, list ten or twenty rows. It’s best to write down loads of features and benefits, even ones that you think trivial, and then eliminate ones that aren’t relevant to your marketing efforts. So the first two columns may have twenty rows, while the last two might look half full. You might be able to combine certain features and benefits with the same marketing message or device. Your time will be well spent if you conjure up even a couple decent marketing ideas that help to effectively communicate your company’s Brand to your customers.

For example, if ample parking is a plus at your shop, then list “plenty of free parking” as a feature. The benefits would include “no money spent on meters; no wasted time looking for a parking space; customers don’t have to walk far to our store”. A couple words that sum up your parking might be “free, close-by parking”.

Making this benefit memorable is a different trick. What if you ran a week-long promotion where you gave a dime to each customer who shopped at your store? The reason—the next time they are shopping where there’s a meter they’ll have a dime, courtesy of Your Store, the home of “always free, always close parking”. The idea here isn’t to come up with a dozen promotions. Rather, it’s to flesh out the little things that can set you apart from the competition. This is the type of exercise you can spend a few days on, thirty minutes at a time, here and there. It’s hard to pull everything up and out of your brain in one quick setting; better to let ideas percolate around inside for a while.