Turn Every Meeting into a Marketing Opportunity
My meeting yesterday with a financial adviser was time well spent.
We discussed how the current economy makes it a wise time to consider investing in financial products that were not advantageous to my goals in past years.
She also advised me to start planning for long-term care and other concerns that will help me preserve my assets. These topics are crucial to understand today, even if they make your head spin.
My adviser and I capitalize on our mutual relationship. We’re both winners because we talk about more than business, but the casual conversation leads to a more-profitable business for each of us.
The same type of relationship with your own service providers will build your gift basket business in more ways than you envision.
This is the type of networking I hope you are practicing as often as possible so that you build strong connections with people who know other people who will do business with you today and tomorrow.
These three tips will build your sales faster with people you know than going to a meeting and announcing that you sell gift baskets.
Too many of these meetings are similar to cold calls, and you know how chilly the reception can be when strangers don’t have long-term interest in your success.
One Way to Develop Business Relationships
A person who owns or is somehow involved with a gift basket business was just named as treasurer of his local chamber of commerce. The story about his position and others named to posts is featured on this news site.
Do you understand what that means in terms of business promotion and future sales?
Becoming part of an entity outside of your business brings you notoriety, exposure, and the ability to put your gift baskets into the hands of corporations and visiting dignitaries that isn’t otherwise available.
Of course, there’s a tradeoff. The main function, in this example, is to maintain the chamber of commerce’s books for a specified period of time. That’s no small deed. However, at term’s end, this gift basket business will be the first company corporations turn to for all-occasion gifts as long as the representative has planted seeds during his tenure.
This stature is also open to you if you choose to pursue it. Such an opportunity takes time and patience to establish. I remember my accountant telling me that it took 10 years of building her membership status to become president of a powerful state-based women’s group. Her business is well known because of her diligence, and her name is synonymous with trust.
On the other hand, it took me less than an hour into my first meeting to become in charge of a golf group’s newsletter. What a waste of time. After months of networking, no one was buying or even interested in my gift baskets. I never truly bonded with the group and should not have accepted the newsletter responsibility during my first meeting with them.
This is a story I share in How to Start a Home-Based Gift Basket Business, one that doesn’t end on a high note. But that doesn’t mean your experience with a chamber group will mirror mine.
If you’re already part of a chamber of commerce, women’s group, or another organization, consider being more than a member, especially if your gut tells you that it’s a good relationship. One day your name may be featured in an article, similar to the one cited in this story. From there, your sales have only one way to go: up.
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