Business relationship building and networking

It's an old adage that "it's not what you know but who you know"

It goes for great business leads, new job opportunities, discounted products for your home or just simply favours for you in life.

I recently developed a new product and wanted people to promote it to their email lists. This article shows the results I received, why I got them and lessons learned for my new promotions in the future.

My networking results

I contacted probably 25 people I knew were in the field of my new product offering to see if they would like to promote it. It's an internet marketing product and I knew the people whose email lists would most likely want to receive information about this. Here are the results :

1) Super well know guru x 3
- PM through internet forum, introduced myself and product.
- Sent to special download page
- Results - no replies


2) Super gurus I have bought products from
- Sent email or thru support forum
- Many follow up
- Result - No replies


3) Middle of the road IM guru
- Sent email and several follow ups
- They promised they would promote in June
- No date for promotion as yet


4) Middle of the road IM guru #2
- Sent email and many, many f/ups
- Said work was excellent
- Not heard of in 2 weeks now


5) Average IM Guru
- Approached thru WF PM
- Many positive replies and f/up emails
- No response for 4 weeks now to email or PM


6) Average IM Guru
- Known for 3 years now
- We swapped sending stuff to each of our 40k lists
- Bingo - sales !!


7) Average IM Gurus x 4
- Emailed with special page
- Great response from folks
- Sent stuff out and we all made sales !!

As you can see results were mixed, so what are the lessons ?

Build a relationship over time

I was expecting far too much. Some people I had never really been in contact before and it was no surprise that I got zero response.

Everyone is busy, and it's like contacting a CEO of a large organisation and expecting him/ her to respond to you straight away. It was disappointing that I didn't get even a reply - but I know that is like hunting for jobs - you don't get replies.

Don't ask - give

A piece of advice I have been given (which I knew but didn't take forward) is to build the relationship by offering something for no gain.

That could be tips, strange happenings in your industry, free items from your own business, a special report, almost anything.

This shows who you are and what you can do. It starts the relationship off and could be the foundations for future business. Just keep up the emails and not let your target out of your sight !.

Contact people in your own league

Perhaps I was aiming too high - but I believe you must aim high and start the relationship today - perhaps it will develop so that in a years time it is ready to be used to your advantage.

However, as you can see from the results, it was the people that I either had a relationship with already or folks that had similar sized businesses to my own that reaped the best results.

So for good results now - target similar sized businesses. For big results in the future - target big businesses now.

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