Networking Action Plan For 2009

January is already over. Time goes so fast that we usually don’t have enough time to do everything we would like. I am sure you probably have your to do list in the morning and when the evening comes you still have a lot to accomplish from it. You got distracted during the day, something happened and you are late.

Well, it is the same thing with new year resolution, we have a lot in mind in December, but by the end of January the priorities we set up are gone for X, Y, Z reasons.

What were your networking strategies in 2008. Did you check the results at the end of the year?

- How many networking events did you attend?
– How many groups did you join?
– How many new contacts did you make, per month, and during the year?
– How many of these new contacts became paying clients?
– How many of your current clients reorder from you?
– How many referrals did you get from your clients or contacts?
– What is your conversion rate?

Did you ever ask yourself all of those questions?

If you didn’t ask yourself all of those questions at the end of 2008, it is an emergency to do it right now. The economy has been pretty bad the past months, so if you don’t change your strategies to get better results, you can expect 2009 to be a very bad year for you.

So take a moment, and write down everything you did to promote your business: networking, marketing, communication, etc.

Whatever you did, did you do it only once or multiple times? For example, if you did a postcard mailing, did you send only one card per contact or a series of cards?

Same if you put an ad in a newspaper or on internet. After how many times did you noticed a result?
Statistic show that we need to hear or see a message at least seven times before we even notice it, so make sure you don’t give up after a couple of tests.

How did you follow up with people? Do you have a follow up system in place to make sure that you always know what to do when you meet somebody new, either at a networking event or any place else?

Did you send them an email and eventually call a few days later, and stop there, like most people do and claim that networking is not working?

Did you create a free report, or a free CD to send to people to let them know more about your business?

Did you update your website, and mention all of your new services or products, and inform everybody that you created new services during the year?

Did you organize teleclasses to reach more people in one time instead of meeting persons one at a time?

Did you create partnerships with other entrepreneurs to offer more services to your clients?

What worked the best for you? What did you do to change the way you were doing business before? What didn’t work, and did you analyze why?

With all of your answers, create an action plan to do more of what worked in 2008 and how you could even double this result in 2009.

To make sure these strategies will be in place for the entire year, schedule a meeting with yourself every week, no less than that, to test, track and analyze everything you do. So you will not spend months wondering how you should grow you business. This meeting with yourself should be your most important meeting of the week. You are your most important client. All the time you will spend working on your business instead of working in your business will generate more and more clients for you and obviously more money for your business.

Create an Excel document with your networking goals for the year and report all of your results and update per date, so you will not forget and put every positive result in red, so each time you will look at it, you will know exactly where you are and where you are going.

(c) 2009 Biba F. Pédron