How To Gain Valuable Business Contacts

Your business contacts can play a critical role in the success of your enterprise. Whether they are partners, suppliers, mentors, or major clients, their contribution to your business could help you reach and surpass your growth targets.

This article explains the steps you can take to make valuable business contacts. We will also share some of the top places you could meet them.

Zero In On Your Unique Selling Point

Your business’s Unique Selling Point is something about it (or its products or services) that sets it apart from other otherwise similar businesses. If you’re able to identify and emphasize your USP in your communication with potential contacts, you may spark their interest in your brand, and nudge them closer to becoming part of your network of important contacts.

Having a USP is crucial in today’s hyper-competitive world. Unless you’re able to come up with a way to distinguish yourself from others in your industry, you could struggle to catch the attention of potential clients, partners, or investors.

Offer Something Valuable

It’s not enough to pitch just any kind of USP. Your business needs to offer something that your would-be contacts would appreciate. While you want to reap benefits from engaging them, they’ll also want their interaction with you to yield them some fruit. Even if they aren’t conscious of the need for a trade-off, they’ll love it if they can reap gains from you.

So, it’s important that you pursue relationships that deliver wins for everyone involved. This will spur all parties concerned to do what they can to offer value. Ultimately, it’ll enable lasting connections.

Personalize Your Communication

This is especially important when you’re interacting with your potential contacts via email, messaging platforms, SMS, or other media that aren’t in-person. Many of the people you communicate with on these channels may already know that they’re used to sending out messages en-masse, without specifying individual recipients. Your customers may be impressed if you’re able to personalize the messages you send to them.

Personalization basically involves using your customers’ first names when you’re communicating with them. It can also include referring to things that directly concern them, e.g. a meeting you’ve had with them, or a product they’ve purchased from you. By personalizing your interaction with them, you let them know that they’re important to you. This could make them more willing to engage you more directly.

The more diverse your network of contacts is, the more valuable it’ll be to you.

A network that has business coaches, suppliers, partners, and clients on it will be more useful than one that just has suppliers and clients on it. You can reach out to the other people on your list if you have problems that they can help you to solve.

It’s also useful to have contacts who represent a variety of backgrounds and experiences. They’ll offer you diverse perspectives on various issues, so that you’re able to look at those issues from multiple viewpoints and make truly informed decisions.

Nurture Your Relationships

It’s not enough to just have extra names, emails and phone numbers on your contacts list. If you’re going to make the most of those connections, you’ll have to nurture your relationship with them.

You can maintain your relationship with your contacts by regularly communicating with them. Follow them up, and reach out via their preferred medium if you haven’t talked with them in a long while. Remember, your engagement with them has to be mutually beneficial.

Where You Can Find Valuable Business Contacts

Here are some places where you can find valuable business contacts:

• Business conferences: Business conferences are typically gatherings of business people and industry stakeholders. If you’re able to interact with some of the people in attendance, you may set up truly helpful connections with them.
• Trade fairs and exhibitions: A lot more can happen at exhibitions than just buying and selling merchandise. Trade fairs could offer you a chance to build potentially beneficial relationships with suppliers and clients.
• Training and seminars: Attendees at business seminars may be active in your industry or a domain that isn’t far removed from it. They could be just the right kinds of partners you need to take the next growth steps at your business.
• Networking events: People who attend networking events do so for at least one reason: to make connections that could benefit their businesses. The contacts they meet at these events may provide an opening into a new market, possess expertise that’s needed in a business partner, share insights for expanding market share or offer some other benefit. One such networking event is the ConnectNigeria Business Mixer, which takes place monthly.
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) events: You could organize, sponsor, or attend a charity event or social development ceremony, and engage people there. While you’ll want to contribute to making the CSR efforts successful, there’s a chance that you’ll meet persons who may eventually become a steady business partners.

Final Words

As a business owner or manager, you should be constantly looking to expand your network of contacts. By providing value to a diverse network of potential contacts, you can build business relationships that could prove crucial to your business’s growth.