Three Ways to Get More Business

There are many different ways that you could start a relationship with the decision maker of a business or a law firm.
1. The first way you can do this is through a referral and, of course, this is the way that everybody wants to grow their business. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our business can grow entirely by referrals? A referral is somebody who tells somebody else about you and then there’s a connection and a relationship starts.

2. Another way to get your relationship going with the decision maker is to request an introduction. This is overlooked in a lot of cases. My favorite way to request an introduction is an email introduction. This is where somebody you know knows somebody who needs your services and you ask the person you know to create an email with your name and the other person’s name on it, a little bit about each of you and then just type “enjoy” and hit send. That way you have permission to interact with your decision maker and to request an introduction or rather to request a meeting. This has been a very, very successful way of starting a relationship with a decision maker.

3. This next way you could go is through networking. A lot of people spend a lot of time networking, but not all networking events were created equal. You could be in a roomful of a lot of people and have nobody in that room who needs your services or knows anybody who needs your services. That’s probably not the best use of your time. You can also be in a roomful of people where there’s only one person who needs your services and that could be a very good use of your time.

Networking success story: One of my clients one time identified that a person that she wanted to introduce herself to was going to be a speaker at a networking event. She drove an hour and a half to see this speaker, not because she was interested in the subject matter but because she wanted to meet the speaker, say something important that mattered and have the speaker invite her to come to the office for a meeting. So we strategized for about an hour about what she could say in about 15 seconds – when there was a crowd of people around that speaker – that would matter and the speaker would invite her in for the meeting. After the hour we had our strategy. She drove the hour and a half and the whole thing went off as planned. She has met with the decision maker and they are in the proposal phase right now.

There’s a lot when it comes to networking in terms of figuring out where is the best place to spend your time, but also the messaging that you use when you’re at a networking event is critical.

This guest blog post was written by Caryn Kopp and was extracted from The Path to Cash. Get the replay or transcript of this multimedia program.