Change has come today
I’ve got a couple of stories brewing about Valley business networking groups and their creative ideas on finding leads in this downturn. No comments yet. You can be the first!
Many companies that never had to search for business before are finding that they have to dig for prospects because new customers aren’t coming in waves anymore.
The fundamentals remain the same: Finding business is a numbers game. The more contacts you make, the more chance you have of getting new business. The difference in a bad economy is that you make have to make more contacts than you do in good times in order to do the same amount of business.
The difficulty in that is that you only have the same amount of time – or less if you’re an employee with hours reduced in response to the downturn – to make a greater number of contacts.
That’s the problem addressed by ideas like speed networking — based on speed dating — in which you get set up with a guaranteed number of prospects but have a very limited, focused time to find out if there’s a fit.
On the same topic, check out “Never worked harder for so little – Isn’t it a great opportunity?” (The item is on Allan Himmelstein’s blog for The Alternative Board, a board of peers — like a board of directors, hence the “alternative” part — that offers peer advice and coaching for small business owners.)
He tells his readers that a host of professionals in the Valley, such as accountants and lawyers, never had to look for business before. Then, he writes, “The market has changed, and the ones that are learning how to develop business rather than wait for it to come to their door will survive.”
24 Sep, 2009 >