BY RICHARD WOODBURY, TRANSCONTINENTAL MEDIA
The Nova Scotia Business Journal
HALIFAX – Business cards are swapping, hands are shook, people mingle and referrals go back and forth. This is the very essence of networking.
“Everybody knows somebody in something,” says Jeffrey Doyle, the owner of Smiledog, a Bedford-based remote reception service company. That pretty much sums up networking. People are able to recommend people with an assurance of quality because they know and trust them.
Doyle’s a frequent networker and belongs to five networking groups. He estimates that 60 per cent of his business comes from networking. “I’m out there to build my business,” says Doyle. “How can you do it when you don’t have a lot of money to throw around for advertising? You do it one person at a time.”
One of the groups Doyle belongs to is Business Networking International (BNI) Burnside. The roughly 25-member group meets every Wednesday over lunch in Dartmouth. In its last fiscal year ending in Oct., the group generated just over $660,000 in business amongst its members, says its president, Jack Churchill. “There’s a much higher possibility of closing a referral than a cold call,” he says.
Other networking groups in metro include BConnected, the Business Breakfast Club and SMB Soapbox. Networking groups operate in different ways. Some have fees, some don’t. Some meet as frequently as on a weekly basis, some don’t. But the one overlapping objective is the desire to help people grow their businesses.
“The way I believe you build influence with people is to have a genuine interest in how you can help them and if you can help people, people will look to you for solutions,” says Jerry White of Rudder Business Advisory Services. “They’ll think of you when you run into a situation where somebody needs help. If they need help themselves, they’ll think, ‘Who can help me?’” White has been a member of BNI Burnside for 14 months. It was during his second lunch with BNI that he landed his first project within the group.
White thinks the key to succeeding in networking groups is asking people the right questions to find out how you can help them. “What does this person do? Is there a way I can help them build their business? Do I know somebody who could use what they do? Do I know someone who would be a good network contact for them? Is what they do something I would use?”
– Daily Business Buzz 19/12/08
