Time Equals Money In Networking

Do you sometimes feel like you're in a rut when it comes to networking and working your Relationship Management System?  If so, I hope you joined me along with special guest Dr. Ivan Misner on our past Marketing Roundtable and got a shot in the arm to pump up your RMS.  

Welcome Dr. Misner for a follow up Special Guest Blog on "Time Equals Money In Networking" which is based on the study he talked about on the Roundtable on how effective your time is spent on networking.

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Dr. Ivan Misner:

The secret to getting more business through networking is . . . spend more time doing it! OK, well, it’s a little more complicated than that because you have to spend time doing the right things.  However, based on the Referral Institute study on business networking, we finally have a definitive answer about how the amount of time spent networking impacts the amount of business that is generated.

The most dramatic statistic I have found shows that people who said “networking played a role” in their success spent an average of 6.5 hours a week participating in networking activities. On the other hand, the majority of people who claimed that “networking did NOT play a role” in their success spent only 2 hours or less per week developing their network.

What does this mean? It means there is a direct correlation between the amount of time you devote to the networking process and the degree of success that you realize from it. To illustrate this further, the graph to the left demonstrates the “average” percentage of business generated from someone’s networking efforts in comparison with the amount of time spent on networking activities.  Here you can clearly see that people who are spending between five to nine hours a week networking are generating (on average) 50 percent of their total business from this activity. 

People who spend, on average, more than 20 hours a week networking are getting almost 70 percent of their business through referrals.

Based on this study, it is clear that people who devote six hours a week or more to networking are generating a large percentage of their business through their efforts. So, it’s time to ask yourself . . . how much time are you spending developing your personal network and what kind of results are you starting to see?

Ivan Misner, Ph.D., Founder & Chief Visionary Officer www.bni.com

I would like to personally thank Dr. Misner for taking the time to join us and sharing with us his insights on networking like a professional to grow your practice.

Roslyn Drotar – Lawyers With Purpose, Internet Marketing Specialist