by Thierry MazuéThis is a discussion I've had with Daniel. I met him for the first time ten years ago. He has been a successful business owner for seven years. However, growth has always been slow, going from +2% to a one time +5%.
To increase his business, he joined a business group less than two years ago, and he is now facing a real challenge: He doesn't know where to find new guests or how to bring referrals on a consistent basis to his fellow members. He likes them, they meet, it's ok, but...
It all started well, but after some time, he had told most of his relatives what he was doing.
He brought visitors, and find some business to his partners from the business group.
Then things started to slow down, and he felt sincerely embarrassed with the situation.
That's when our conversation started: what could he do? what was going wrong? this kind of questions.
My first question was about his own business: How did you start it? And then, how did you get new customers? The former owner of his business proposed a deal to him, helping him taking over the company, paying a reasonable fee over some years to pay for the business he was taking. So he did not start from scratch, and things just went well.
Now, the second questions brought interesting answers: New customers? Well from time to time, a customer told him "you should call M. X from ABC Corp, they need more or less the same thing we are buying from you..." and that' pretty much it.
You mean: no Ads, no prospecting, no... nothing? Yes!
Well, you know, I have to run the business and take care of most of the things here, so It was kind of hard to develop the company and to spend time working on sales. But anyway, we are doing good, making reasonable money.
Here is a reality check: He never had any real action to increase his business. Nothing really planned or thought about.
Then we spend one hour talking about what he could do differently to revert the situation.
This what came out of our conversation :
Plan for the coming months includes:
- Ask his friend Pascal to invite him to these networking events he often goes to.
- Find out at the local chamber how he could meet and talk to somebody to find out how he could meet entrepreneurs.
- Finally, talking to Jean (same business, different location - they often exchange resources), he will also go to visit their professional association.
In addition to this, he decided to spend more time with some of the members of his business group to get a better understanding of their needs in terms of business.
Combined to more people he is going to meet, he will certainly start being a good provider for his business group. As Dr. Misner (founder of BNI) said: "Networking is helping others as a way to grow your business", and this is what Daniel will try to do.
So, we talked about a plan, set goals for the coming 3 months.
Then, he decided to do the same thing he does on all his professional business: when something is finished, what is the real final result?
Reality check will be performed every month to see what is helping him in his new project to become a focused business networker. I'll help him, being his accountability partner.
I'll come back to you to share with you the results of this plan. In the meantime, please feel free to share all the good things you did to increase your businesses.
Thierry Mazué
Paris - France
For more information, please visit Thierry's TNNW Bio.
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