In my professional work, I have noticed three major trends taking place during this recession:
- Companies have cut right back on print advertising and have shifted their marketing spend to pay-per-click advertising where it’s easier to measure the return on investment.
- Cold calling has gone out of fashion with most companies and even the sales gurus regarding it as a complete waste of time and money.
- Networking has mushroomed, with numerous networking groups both online and offline set up over the last few years.
This last development is by far the most interesting one. Whereas in the past you would spend all day on the phone cold calling companies in order to get an appointment, today you can get that same appointment by using social networks.
Let’s take an example. Say you’re an independent financial adviser and you’re seeking accountants to refer work to you. You can do two things. You can spend all day on the phone and get one or two appointments that may or may not lead to work, or you can spend some time on http://www.linkedin.com looking up some of the firms you are looking to target. As well as being able to look up the relevant contact in each firm, you can also find out if your target contact has a “shared connection” – in other words, who do they know who also knows you? If that shared connection knows you well enough (and trusts you), they may be happy to recommend you to them. And let’s face it, you have far more chance of getting in front of somebody if it’s via an introduction.
All you need to do now is build up the number of LinkedIn connections you have. The larger your online network, the more likely it is that someone in you network will know someone at the company you are trying to target.
And how do you enlarge your LinkedIn network? To explain that requires a whole separate article, but in a sentence, you need to do some face to face networking via groups such as Netlinked, NRG or 4Networking. By regularly attending a networking group, you will start building relationships with people that you can carry on networking with online.
How you network online is something that I will cover in my next article.
