The Positives of Face-to-Face Networking
As a business owner, you will be well aware of the different standards and procedures that take place every time you step out to meet a client. But when was the last time you actually set out of your way to go and meet a client in person?
This might seem like old hat, and with the power of the internet you don’t need to do this at all, right? Wrong.
Meeting clients face to face is still the ultimate way to make a sale. Nothing is more personable and easy to trust than the person sitting in front of you. While you may say all the right things during your e-mails, the fact it is over digital media can lessen some people’s potential to trust you.
Even if you are a freelance web designer, meeting a client in a nearby coffee shop or similar is much more beneficial than just leaving it purely as an online relationship. In person, you can draw ideas from the way they react to your questions; you can start to understand the basics of the situation you are involved in a little bit better and give them real-time examples of the type of aid and assistance you can provide them with.
Online networking lets you reach out to more people and hit a wider audience, but face-to-face networking lets you make the sale much easier. You can deal with everything in that one meeting, not ten-fifteen e-mails which could take a few working days to get everything up and running for the client.
Many of us are beginning to neglect the old approaches that made millionaires of the generations before us. Face-to-face networking is still the be-all and end-all for many businesses – for others, it’s the only way to work even today in the online media world.
By meeting up in person you can immediately;
- Put a face to the @ address they have been speaking with in person
- Get more comfortable – in person, you can find it’s easier to boost the relationship and have a general chat. Over e-mail, it’s strictly business
- Inspire them to work with you. By giving them a face and a real person to interact with, they are much more likely to actually take you on
- Make your point – With the online barrier removed, you can actually fully explain everything that you want to get across the table to your client without ever getting too caught up in the e-mail or how to say certain things
Either way, this is some of the most useful knowledge you can take into a business venture. The next time you get some business, meet them in a local place and see how much work you can get done in a meeting – you will be very surprised.
