Network! Get work!
by Fred Roed on 22/11/05 at 4:26 pm
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Went to a meeting today where some business types shoot the breeze about their particular products or services. The meetings occur every Tuesday and are part of BNI (Business Network International), which is a ‘Word of Mouth Marketing Organisation’ (www.bni.co.za) aimed at generating referrals for each other.
One lady in the group does not receive referrals very often, but this morning she did something a little different. Instead of the normal schpeel about why she is so much better than her competitors, she described her ideal business contact.
As a result, she immediately got two really good referrals, one of them from me!
The reason I gave it to her was because, in describing her perfect contact, she perfectly described a good friend of mine in a high-profile company. In 2 years of attending these meetings with her, I had never given her a referral, and there was no chance I would have given her this particular referral had she not changed tack from describing what she does to what she wanted.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
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