I’ve spoken at length about the Joy of Networking and how important it is for business.  In essence, networking is about meeting the right people, and staying in touch for mutual benefit.

Today, I want to talk about one of my principal pleasures in life – cake dates.  A cake date is a term I’ve stolen from Pete Jenkins over at e-Advantage and means going for coffee (and of course a cake) to find out more about a potential client/referrer/interesting person/business friend.  Or to keep in touch with someone who is already an old client/referrer/interesting person/business friend.

Here are the cake date tips

These are just my cakes!

Do make sure that you talk business as well as catching up on the gossip. Do your research, read their blog, check them out on LinkedIn for mutual contacts and to find out more about their background.  This gives you a better idea of what they’re about, and gives you chance to ask very specific questions about areas of their work which might have some synergy or overlap with what you do.

Be ready to tell stories about your business which shows how you work.  I often ask people who their ideal client is, so that I can see how I might be able to make referrals and help out.  And of course, then you can say who your ideal client is as well.

Be prepared to ask daft questions if you don’t understand something, and don’t be all British about asking about money.  If you’re going to refer someone, or ask them to make referrals for you, you do need to understand how much they charge, otherwise you’re going to be barking up the wrong potential customer trees for them.

Spend an hour on talking about business, and then be prepared to head off.  That way the cake date doesn’t eat too much into your day, and you can still afford 15 minutes for more social chit chat at the end of the date.

And do follow up and email to say that it was good to catch up so you’re reinforcing your message, and have a chance to be helpful again by sending them useful articles, contacts of other people who might be useful, etc.

And if you hit it off, add this person to your list of top referrers (see my Joy of Business system of networking) so you make sure you stay in touch and have a long and fruitful relationship.

Where to eat cake

I’m compiling a list of suitable cake date venues in Brighton, Hove, Sussex and London.  They need to have excellent coffee, good cake and be quiet enough so that you can have a conversation without having to shout, or without the rest of the cafe hearing what your daily rate or current business issues are.

Where would you recommend for a cake date?

The delicious cakes shown above come are made by the delightful Jen Lindsay-Clarke at the amazing She Bakes If you ever need a fancy cake, give Jen a call

I’m a big fan of networking as a way of building up your business. I get about 60% of my business advice clients through networking and referrals, so it’s a healthy way of generating new business.  Not to mention all the friends I’ve made, the people I trust when I need something for my business, and all the people I work with on joint projects.

It’s important.  But I see a lot of people putting a lot of effort into going out networking and meeting new people, but then not making the most of those contacts as they go along.  So I want to talk about networking as a system, a process that you can use to build your business.  If you follow this, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll get results, unless you’re selling false nails for cats, or Betamax videos.

Meet some nice people

photo by Frédérique in NZ

Find some people.  Go out, meet some people who might be interested in your business.  Go to some networking events (here’s my list of networking events in Brighton/Sussex)

Be nice.  Be interested in what everyone else is doing.  Get involved.  Tell people about what you do, but after you’ve found out about them.  Smile.  Aim to speak to between 5 and 10 people in an hour, rather than working the room.

This is the step that lots of people do.  They show up, they talk to people, and they go off and do their work.  But it’s probably the least important step.  It’s a bit like going and looking at lots of pound notes, but not bothering to do the work to put them in the bank.

How to put the pound notes in the bank

Apologies to those readers who are too young to believe that there ever were pound notes, but I’m sure you get the metaphor.

photo by tigerweet

The next step is to follow up.  Within the next couple of days, send the person you spoke to a quick email saying that it was nice to talk to them about…the foolishness of the 20% VAT rate, or the best place to buy ice cream in Brighton, or whatever you were chatting about. If you can give them an article or a weblink which helps them out in some way (not your latest blog post or white paper) then this is nice too. Make sure you have your phone number, website address and preferably a link to your twitter handle in your email signature, so when they want to get in touch they can find you.

And, send them an invitation to join you on LinkedIn.  Do not use the standard invitation – personalise it with a few words, as I’m not the only person who feels spammed and spurned if someone wants to connect on LinkedIn and doesn’t even say hi.

Keeping in touch

This is the most important, and difficult part of the networking system.

Because I’ve just launched my other business, Tender Winner I’ve been going through my address book and emailing just about everyone I’ve ever met to tell them about my new thing.  I’ve been astonished by how many people have just disappeared.  Bounce back emails, resounding silence…  Where are they all?  I’ve tried to find the nice ones on LinkedIn, but some of them seem to be lost forever.

Some of this is my fault, as I’ve not followed my own rule about keeping in touch as much as I should, but it seems that quite a lot of people have just moved on, and not bothered to tell me that they’ve changed company, or changed email address.  So all that networking they did was a waste of time – I’ve no way of helping them with whatever they’re doing now.

But there are lots of people who are still alive and well and I’ve got their updated email address.

Here are some ideas for keeping in touch

photo by Jeff Cushner

• Identify your best referrers and friends and put them in a spreadsheet or allocate a category in Outlook.  Make sure that you contact those people every 3 months in some way – this can be a good excuse to ask for referrals
• For your very best referrers and the people you like, be sure to ask them out on a cake date to catch up.  Ensure you make time for this, especially if you’re busy.  They’ll come in handy if you want to be more busy.
• Ensure you’re checking out what people are doing on twitter and/or LinkedIn, and  comment.  Make time to do this and just touch base every now and again.
• When people tell you about what they’re doing, or ask for a favour, make sure you get back in touch, and tell them about what you’re up to as well
• Look for opportunities to do people favours. Not only does this give you a warm glow inside, the reciprocity principle means that they’ll be much more likely to do something for you at some stage. If you read an article about bee-keeping in urban gardens, send it to that person you met at the Brighton Chamber breakfast who does landscape gardening.
• If you think someone is offering a good service, be sure to do everything you can to promote their business.  Sell them as if you were selling your own services. And be sure to tell them that you’ve made a referral, even if nothing comes of it they’ll still appreciate the effort.
• If you know people’s birthdays (and this can be as simple as noting it down when they tell you about the birthday they had last week, so you’re ready for next year) send them an email to say Happy Birthday.  In an age where birthday cards and presents are dying out, they’ll be touched that you took the trouble.

Right, I’m off to make a note of when Tim Misson’s birthday is, and answer that email from Richard Hall asking me for some thoughts on marketing for his next book.  Let me know how you get on.

Some of you may have seen the debate raging recently on Twitter about the best place in Brighton (and Hove, of course) to buy ice cream.  After exhaustive work by all the people who sent in the ice cream experiences, the most popular vote went to Boho Gelato in Pool Valley.  There were honourable mentions for Marocco’s by the King Alfred, and Scoop and Crumb.  I disallowed any contestants who sell frozen yoghurt, as that’s not ice cream as I know it.

Why have I been talking about icecream?  Is it a summer frenzy?  Have I given up chocolate?  No, I just needed a link from this article about business networking.

But if you have ice cream opinions, are one of my London clients and prefer the giddy heights of Fregoo’s or other London ice cream establishments, or have something interesting to say about where business and ice cream mix (or should that be melt) do let me know.

I’m just going to have a quick rant.  Then it’s over, I promise.

I use LinkedIn as one of my essential business tools for networking.  I pretty much use it everyday.  I check out prospective clients, keep up with what’s going on, follow discussions in a number of groups, and have most of my network of business colleagues, suppliers, business advice clients on LinkedIn.

And I get lots of invitations to connect.  A good handful every week.  Some of them are very nice, people say hi, and tell me something about why we might want to connect.  But lots of these invitations are just the standard “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”

And that annoys me. If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, that should be because you want to keep in touch and forge a long lasting relationship using the magic tools of LinkedIn.  So if you want a long lasting relationship, where perhaps we can help each other out on the often difficult road to business success, why not take a couple of minutes to say hello.  Don’t just press a button, and expect a relationship.  I’m not a vending machine – you can’t just press “Add Julia to your network” and expect me to be your friend.

It takes more than that.  I’m worth more than that.  And so are all the other people in the network you want to build up.

I’m neither a stamp nor a butterfly

People are not objects to add to your collection.  Relationships take time and effort to nurture.  I’m not a stamp or a butterfly for you to add to your collection.

photo by frontenddeveloper

I’m more of an exotic orchid, and if you want our friendship to blossom you’re going to have to put in a bit more of an effort than that.

photo by pipestone

Rant over

If we’ve met and you would like to stay in touch on LinkedIn, please do invite me.  I’ll be happy to be your LinkedIn buddy – but say hello first.

Other posts about LinkedIn

Here’s a more indepth guide to using LinkedIn for business and a different rant about why I get random invitations (or spam) on LinkedIn

I was thinking about all of those business jargon words and phrases that come up all the time that we don’t have a clue what they mean, but we feel that we’ll look daft if everyone finds out that we don’t know.

photo by dull hunk

The most extreme example of this is when someone was pontificating about the importance of CPO.  I was racking my brain as to what this could mean, and eventually had to ask because it was bugging me, and I don’t mind looking stupid (well not too much.)  It turned out this guy meant CPD (Continuing Professional Development) not CPO and everyone else had been trying to work out what he was going on about as well.

Although it turns out that there are dozens of meanings for CPO as well, he could have meant Chief Petty Officer or Certified Prosthetist and Orthotist, or any number of the CPO’s on this list for you jargon collectors.

The lesson for me here was to ask, because often everyone else in the room will be wondering exactly the same question, and they’ll be grateful to you for asking.

If you want some good definitions of business jargon, I’ve been collecting some good ones here, and giving my plain English version of them

Business jargon Part 1 – Sensitivity analysis and KPI’s

Business jargon part 2 – Opportunity cost, scaleability and marketing collateral

Business jargon part 3 – Discounted cashflow and ROI