You may ask: How do I get my employees to buy into networking as a way to grow the business?
Your support staff are a source of referrals and your networking efforts won’t succeed until everyone in the company takes part. So engaging your entire staff in your word-of-mouth marketing campaign – not only at start-up, but also throughout the life of your business – will ultimately be a win-win situation
These are some tips on how to engage your staff in networking:
Include networking in the job description for each and every employee. When a new employee knows upfront that they are expected to incorporate networking into their job, it will happen.
Have clear and reasonable expectations. If your company manufactures a very obscure product, your staff might have a hard time bringing in lots of referrals. However, keep in mind that people are more important in the networking process than the type of product being sold. When you have the right persons, they will be able to build a network around any kind of product or service. Teach your staff how to network effectively for the company. Hold focus groups where you role play ways to ask for referrals from customers, friends and family and bring in a networking expert for in-house training.
If you belong to a weekly networking group, bring your staff to those meetings one at a time so each member can see first-hand what networking can produce. This also helps your networking partners feel that they know your business better, since they’ve been able to meet the people in your company.
Motivate your staff to bring referrals to the company. You may want to offer a monetary bonus to your employees for every new customer so they will feel rewarded each time one of their referrals comes through the door. You might even establish a “Networker Of The Month” status and offer a staycation weekend as reward.
Whatever you decide, make the motivation something that’s relevant to your industry and, most of all, exciting to your staff. With a bonus system in place, employees will want to take every opportunity to attend networking and social events in the community, so as to develop other connections while passing out business cards and fliers for the company.
Be sure your staff sees you practising your networking skills. All too often, networking is something done behind the scenes and not necessarily in front of the staff. Entrepreneurs don’t normally share with their staff the amount of time and energy they put into building and maintaining their businesses utilising word-of-mouth marketing. If you expect your staff to do something, motivate and reward them for doing it and let them see you doing it as well.
A great way is to track how much business you have brought in, as well as the staff’s numbers. Can you imagine how a staff member will feel when he or she realises that they are ahead of you? And imagine the profits your company will realise when everyone in the company focuses on growing the business.
Networking is a group activity. Make sure to get your whole team on board with the process.
• Curtis K. Belgrave is a director of BNI, said to be the worlds’ largest business networking organisation.