 One of the avenues that we could use our speaking skills is at networking events.
In fact, networking events is a good place to spread our wings and expand our reach. Author Don Gabor (of the bestselling How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends) mentioned that most business owners and professionals go to networking events to find "new customers". But are there other reasons for us to attend networking sessions? I would suggest for business owners and professionals to have their own individual "goal" before they decided to attend such events. This is so that their time are worthwhile and are more likely to meet their key business objectives for their successes. Here are my Top Five Reasons why we should attend such events: 1) Build Relationship & Network This is usually my main reason as to why I attend networking events. In fact, when I launched my The Stage Fright Antidote! book in June last year (2013), I used it as a networking platform for people, friends, former colleagues and business partners to get to know each other and build network. Through this event, we can get to know people face-to-face and long-term professional relationship could be built from there. 2) Find Strategic Partners A few of my strategic partners I currently work with was because of the fact that I attended networking events. Through this, The Speaking Factory managed to expand our network and offer our expertise to other people who may have not known our existence initially. 3) Find 'potential' Staff Some companies use this to "poach" suitable candidates and who have shown professional work skills that may be in need in their organisation. While this a suitable platform to identify such people, do remember on some ethics when we want to do recruiting as a result of this networking session(s). 4) Find suitable vendors, products & services Such event was where I got to know our corporate and event T-shirts and vendors. Currently, at The Speaking Factory, we identified two major vendors that usually help us in that areas. 5) Find new leads, referrals & customers This is the "blood " of the business. There is no business if there is no customers. Through events like these, we can get referrals & leads that we could build into our existing database whom we could provide our services to. These are our Top 5 reasons for networking. What are yours? Yours creatively, Hazriq Idrus Author, The Stage Fright Antidote! Founder/ Lead Consultant, The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd Comments are closed.
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