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March 5, 2010We have talked previously on a blog posting about face-to-face networking and how important this is for your long-term business development.
Now, we want to make this an automatic part of your regular business schedule. We will explore some ways of doing this here. The aim is to structure your face-to-face networking for the next year. This might seem like a long time but you have to remember that many events especially the formal ones such as exhibitions and seminars are planned and announced months in advance.
This is important in order for you to find freelance consulting jobs on a regular basis.
Research All The Relevant Networking Opportunities
The first thing you need to do is to schedule some time to explore all of the possible organisations and groups which offer you networking opportunities. These will include trade associations, unions, conferences and seminars, regional and international networking events as well as all the many other events unique to yourself.
You then want to go through their websites or journal and find out when they have their scheduled events. Some of the big ones will be planned months in advance such as the 3G conference or other international meetings. You can pencil these into your diary now and start making bookings for flights and travel etc in order to make savings.
You can also ask yourself which are the events worth attending the most and which are kind of nice to have but not not urgent.
Attend the Weekly or Monthly Events
There will also be some more regular perhaps more informal networking opportunities across different organisations and groups. Some of these will be specific to consulting, others will be specific to your vertical industry such as retail or healthcare, others will be function related such as logistics or marketing and others will just be local such as London based or Ealing etc.
The idea is that over a period of a year you can visit each of these two or three times to make up your mind whether they are worth attending to on a regular basis. In this list, it is also worth considering events which will be beneficial for your skill set and effectiveness as a consultant. Of this, I’m thinking of things like Toastmasters which you would need to attend almost monthly possible to get the real benefit.
Schedule In One On One Meetings or Smaller Group Events
Another great idea is to set up a time or day when you will be free to have meetings, lunch or coffee with individuals. This can be the new potential clients you are trying to meet or it could be people already in your network who you have not been in contact with it for awhile. You can also arrange drinks or some kind of small informal event when you can invite several people of the same type, e.g other freelance consultants or noncompeting potential clients.
By having a specific date e.g. Monday evenings available, it will be easier to schedule such meetings on a regular basis. You can also look at specific talks or seminars which you are interested in attending and which may be of benefit for potential clients to attend.
The key point with creating a structure for face-to-face networking for freelance consultants is that you do this regularly, you cover the major events especially formal ones in your industry and you allow for attending many informal networking opportunities at some of the more informal ones may be hit and miss, one week may be amazing in terms of contacts you meet whereas another week at the same event might be quite quiet but hopefully they will balance out over the period of a year.
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