Be Selfish, Do Recons!

Most of us are living in a reactionary state where we seem to have no control over what we are doing; we just react to customer needs.

But in among the chaos of day to day we all make time for important things of business.

We stop and do our payroll for the staff.
We stop and do our day to day bookkeeping.
We make time to attend our networking meetings.

But what is the point of going to any meeting if you do not plan what you want to achieve from the meeting?

I want to plant a controversial seed in your mind. The initial reason you joined your networking group is fundamentally selfish.

We all joined it as a way of getting more business for what seemed like little effort.

But, Anyone who has been involved in networking for a while knows that this initial idea is completely false and to benefit from networking you need to make a lot of effort.

You need to think about how you can educate the group to spot a referral opportunity for you.
You need to prepare a 10-minute presentation every eight months or so

Both of these activities are done outside the meeting, but the most important aspect of your ability to have members find new business for you is the Recon Meeting.

Recon meetings are the core activity for networking success. They build knowledge and understanding of your business which gives the other person the ability to recommend you both more often and with more authority.

I would go as far as to say if you are not conducting an active weekly Recon Meeting plan, you are wasting your time going to your networking group. You may as well go to the pub once a week if all you want is social interaction.

Don’t get me wrong, the social aspect and the comradery of the group are equal to the referrals, but if you don’t make an effort to invite me to come to learn about you I may struggle to understand how I can find work for you.

You need to add to the ‘must do’s’ of your week. To Payroll, bookkeeping and turning up at your networking group, add Recon Meetings – 1 hour per week and try to see everyone at your place of work and their place of work once a year.

So what I suggest is we all need to revert to our initial selfish aims of joining this group and do more Recons so the other members of the group can find us more referrals.