If you want to grow you business quickly

Many of the small business owners I know say there’s just not enough hours in the day to do everything. So why are they wasting their time networking when there are better ways to draw in new clients which take much less time?

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First thing to ask is why do people go networking? 

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My answer: To make connections, meet new people, support other members of the group and ultimately create more business. The thing is, people are unlikely to open their wallets to you until they know, like and trust you and it takes 7 touch points to get there.

If you want people to know, like and trust you through networking, that could mean going to 5 meetings and having a couple of one-to-one’s. When you add in time for planning and preparation, oh and the travel, that’s practically week of work, just to get one person to trust you enough to buy from you.

Using just a tenth of the time to get one person on your side networking, you could do some video marketing to get hundreds, if not thousands of people knowing you, liking you and trusting you.

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How to you get people to know, like and trust you before they've even met you?...

By sharing your expertise through video

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Instead of spending 4 hours going networking it is possible to:

• shoot 3 or 4 videos
• edit the videos
• upload the videos to YouTube
• describe and tag the videos so they are found
• share the videos on your favoured social media platform
• put a video in a blog if you choose

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And the benefit of all this?

It's simple. Once you have videos out there, those videos keep working for you. Videos I made 3 or 4 years ago are still being watched, and the people viewing them are still getting to know, like and trust me. And when they are looking to buy, even though they've never met me, the sale is so much easier because they already know me through my videos.

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My videos have also set me up as an expert in my field

Now, instead of going to network meetings as a "member", I get invited as a guest speaker because people want to learn from me.

Instead of having one minute to present myself, I get 30 minutes to talk about what I do and really engage the audience. I only need to go to 2 or 3 network events a year to get the same exposure as I used to get going twice a week - and I can't begin to tell you how much time that has saved me (and the business it has created).

So are network meetings a waste of time? Well no, not really. Especially if I'm the guy speaking at the event that you've gone to listen to!