Networking South Wales

There are dozens of business networks in South Wales . I help businesses with business strategy and planning (“Business Building”) and I deal with business finance and organisation. Not a shameless plug altogether because my point is that the business planning for growth requires experience and knowledge in networking as a major sub heading under the all embracing term “Marketing”. You need all this in place to get your finance sorted to show you are a functional business ,  by which time you have a plan to put into action, if you have done it properly.

My view is that there is not just one answer to networking. Some networks work best with a business that can be easily pigeon holed by everyone. (Accurately or not – doesn’t matter, you can sort that out later on). Other businesses do not.

Then again if you like a strong systematic approach you will feel comfortable in some groups more than others.

So which Group is best?  When I am helping a business who is new to networking my first questions are about what they expect to get from it. Their answer tells me if they understand. If they do the networks to attend depend on the nature of their business but also their own  attitude and character. It is more complicated than it appears. Some have a number of outlets, some have only one. Some are relaxed and some are highly structured. In most cases they have a preponderance of small single person businesses. That does not matter. In many cases the owners are ex corporate with major cvs behind them. These people often have substantial networks of contacts . Never judge a book...

It is vital to understand networking as much as this applies to ‘online Social Networks’, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and the like. If you feel you must ask ‘what was my return on that meeting?’ then you haven’t understood what you are supposed to be doing. If you feel you see a room full of punters when you go to a meeting then you have misunderstood that as well, and you will mark yourself down as someone to avoid. So have a strategy .  

Try to follow up your networking and measure your ‘Return on Investment’ over 20 meetings, say, but don’t forget to estimate the worth of someone acknowledging your introduction with ‘I have heard about you.’

The business of getting your business known is not straightforward. It needs a mixture of resources and approaches.

For those just starting out it is worth a hundred dead ends to get help from the start to plan your marketing and networking in particular. At Bob Shepherd Associates we have a particular interest in start up businesses. It need not cost much to get guidance and the saving in time effort and therefore that ‘return on investment’ we were so worried about above will pay dividends in due course.

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